Landscape connectivity for the invisibles

Abstract

Because of land use changes, a worldwide decrease in biodiversity is underway, mostly driven by habitat degradation and fragmentation. Increasing landscape connectivity (i.e. the degree to which the landscape facilitates movement between habitat patches) has been proposed as a key landscape-level strategy to counterbalance the negative effects of habitat fragmentation. A robust theoretical and methodological framework has been developed for the concept of connectivity, and an increasing body of empirical evidence supports the relevance of connectivity for biodiversity. However, the framework was built ignoring species that represent the dominant proportion of biodiversity on earth: microorganisms. The extent to which the existing conceptual and methodological frameworks on connectivity can be applied to microorganisms remain unknown. We reviewed existing evidence and analyzed methods to test the influence of connectivity on microorganisms. We included all types of microorganisms, from symbiotic to pathogenic and free-living microorganisms, across all ecosystems. We describe the effect of connectivity on microorganism populations and communities, and identify the limitations and large gaps in current knowledge. Microorganisms can differ from macroorganisms in their response to connectivity due to short (distance less than a meter) dispersal distance of some groups, longer time lag of microorganisms response (possibly accompanied by evolutionary processes) and host association. The latter relies on tight interactions and feedback effects that drive microbial-landscape relationships and lead to possible coadaptation processes. Incorporating the connectivity concept in microbial community assembly rules to preserve the diversity of microbial communities and the ecosystem services they provide could be a crucial step forward in the face of pressing global changes.