Imagine, after a long journey, you arrive alone in a hotel. The radio is playing a nice song…
“On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night”
You’re lucky, all of the rooms are free, and you can choose the one you like. You try all of the rooms and choose the largest, most comfortable room, with the best view and a well-stocked fridge.
“Welcome to the Hotel Testate Amoebae
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel Testate Amoebae
Any time of year (Any time of year)
You can find it here”
After some time, you realize you start getting bored alone in this hotel and call some friends to share your room and your fridge. Your friends delight greatly in your hotel and thus call their own friends to continue parties, reducing the space and resources available.
“They livin’ it up at the Hotel Testate Amoebae
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)”
You decide to move with your friends in another hotel, nicely situated in the mountains. Here again, the local food is great and parties abundant… decreasing food and drinks quickly after few weeks… Why not moving again? Seems a good choice and you move not so far in new hotel.
Just get in the hotel, “You called up the Captain, ’Please bring me French red wine’
He said, ‘We haven’t had such wine here since nineteen sixty nine’
Some voices are calling from far away,
‘They only have Coca Cola there…’
Just to hear them say…”
What do you do? You have some good old whiskey in stock and therefore decide to mix it with Coca Cola… Unfortunately, this mixture is not good enough for your friends forcing them leaving one by one…
“Last thing I remember, they were
Running for the door…”
What do testate amoebae do when different nutrient resources are available? This is the question posed by Krashevska et al. (2014). These authors found that testate amoebae from tropical mountain rainforests significantly responded to moderate nutrient additions. They investigated rainforests along an altitudinal transect to get insight into variations in the effects of nutrient inputs with altitude. They found that both diversity and density of testate amoebae benefited from the addition of N (e.g. French red wine), whereas the addition of P detrimentally affected their diversity and density (e.g. Whiskey-Coca Cola mixture). They also found that Nutrient-mediated changes in microbial PLFA community structure contributed only little to these changes, suggesting that testate amoebae communities are structured predominantly by abiotic factors rather than by the availability of food, but a more detailed analysis of microbial communities are needed to test these suggestions.
In conclusion, the results of Krashevska et al. suggest that testate amoebae communities of tropical mountain rainforests are structured by both positive and negative interactions via both biotic and abiotic factors, and that the response of testate amoebae to nutrient addition is dependent from altitude.
Krashevska, V., Sandmann, D., Maraun, M., & Scheu, S. (2014). Moderate changes in nutrient input alter tropical microbial and protist communities and belowground linkages, The ISME Journal 8(5), 1126–1134. [http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/v8/n5/abs/ismej2013209a.html]
From inside the shell 