Scaling laws predict global microbial diversity

Scaling laws underpin unifying theories of biodiversity and are among the most predictively powerful relationships in biology. However, scaling laws developed for plants and animals often go untested or fail to hold for microorganisms. As a result, it is unclear whether scaling laws of biodiversity will span evolutionarily distant domains of life that encompass all modes of metabolism and scales of abundance. Using a global-scale compilation of ∼35,000 sites and ∼5.6⋅10(6) species, including the largest ever inventory of high-throughput molecular data and one of the largest compilations of plant and animal community data, we show similar rates of scaling in commonness and rarity across microorganisms and…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Award: 1442246
• IR
  Innovative Research Group Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China
• UG
  U.S. Geological Survey
• AR
  Army Research Laboratory

  Award: W911NF-14-1-0411