Limitations to fungal diversity in forest soil during secondary succession

Abstract

The Bass Becking and Beijerinck theory of the microbial world that ‘everything is everywhere but the environment selects' has provided a basis to test microbial ecological theory for almost a century (Baas Becking 1934). Applying theory to the apparent chaos of the microbial world is arduous, and applying rules that guide our understanding is difficult. The Bass Becking and Beijerinck theory attempts to explain microbial community structure, i.e. why are certain microbes in a given environment? And why is a particular environment populated by certain microbes? Since the theory was advanced, limitations have been found. In particular, the advent of next‐generation sequencing in the 2000s has amplified our ability to categorize and quantify the microbial world (Tringe and Rubin 2005). Despite evident limitations demonstrating that the Bass Becking and Beijerinck theory is an oversimplification, it is perhaps the most unifying theory within microbial ecology (De Wit and Bouvier 2006).