Detalle de: A systematic review of diversity-invasibility relationships in experimental microbial communities

The diversity-invasibility hypothesis (Elton, 1958) states that there is a negative relationship between the diversity of an ecological community and the ability of invaders to establish in it. This hypothesis has been the subject of many experiments in ecology, with the majority of experimental results supporting it (Levine et al. 2002). More recently, this hypothesis has been extended to microorganisms, with a suite of microbial ecology experiments emerging in the past ~20 years that test the diversity-invasibility hypothesis in experimental microbial communities. However, the results of these experiments have not been systematically reviewed and meta-analysed, and thus consensus about diversity-invasibility in microbial communities is lacking. Here we set out a protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis to synthesise the evidence for diversity-invasibility relationships in microbial ecology. The study will help elucidate the importance of microbial diversity for the stability of microbial communities to invasion, which may have relevance for conserving the integrity of microbial communities that perform ecosystem services and/or protect hosts from pathogen invasion.