Distribution and Composition of Cyanobacteria and Microalgae Associated with Biological Soil Crusts in the Gurbantunggut Desert, China

Light Structures Phototroph, Bacterial and Fungal Communities at the Soil Surface

“…Soil surface communities are different from those of bulk soil due to the development of photosynthetic communities such as cyanobacteria, algae, mosses, and lichens, which can form biological soil crusts (BSC) with time [2]–[7]. There has been a dramatic rise in publications reporting on the role of BSCs recently as it has become recognized that this area is a distinct ecosystem with increased nutrient levels [8] and erosion resistance [9] compared to soil without phototroph communities.…”

“…There has been a dramatic rise in publications reporting on the role of BSCs recently as it has become recognized that this area is a distinct ecosystem with increased nutrient levels [8] and erosion resistance [9] compared to soil without phototroph communities. BSC research to date has focused on arid and semi-arid lands such as the Colorado plateau and Sonoran desert in the USA [2]–[4], [10], Gurbantunggut desert in northwest China [7], [9], Negev desert in Israel [11] and Oman [6], where phototroph communities have been estimated to cover up to 70% of the soil surface [12]. BSCs have also been shown to be widespread in temperate soils and under agricultural crops [5], , however, little is known about their community structure and ecological significance.…”

Controls on Distribution Patterns of Biological Soil Crusts at Micro- to Global Scales

“…Also in Belnap and Lange (2003), Büdel (2003) provided the first global study of the biogeography of biocrust genera. As our science has progressed, literature on this topic has accumulated, and the geographic scope of our regional knowledge of biocrust distributions has expanded in North America (e.g., Bowker et al 2005;Ponzetti and McCune 2001;Rivera-Aguilar et al 2006;Root et al 2011), Asia (e.g., Rosentreter et al 2014;Tirkey and Adhikary 2005;Zhang et al 2007;Zhang et al 2011), Africa (e.g., Büdel et al 2009;Lalley et al 2006;Zedda et al 2011), the Middle East (e.g., Abed et al 2010Abed et al , 2013, and Europe (e.g., Concostrina-Zubiri et al 2013;Martínez et al 2006). Our synthesis presented here does not encompass the distribution of hypoliths (see Chap.…”

Bacteria and Non-lichenized Fungi Within Biological Soil Crusts

“…Culturebased approaches have been applied (Garcia-Pichel et al 2001Gundlapally and Garcia-Pichel 2006;Abed et al 2010;Zhang et al 2011), providing isolates for in-depth study of biocrust organism genomes and physiology (Yeager et al 2007;Starkenburg et al 2011). However, as cultivation techniques only retrieve a small fraction of the total microbial diversity, culture-independent methods have been increasingly used.…”