Yeast Community Composition and Structure

Abstract

Yeasts are globally distributed, but different species occur in different climates and environments. With a few exceptions, yeasts do not occur in their natural environments as a pure culture but co-occur with other microscopic eukaryotes and prokaryotes and comprise microbial communities. The observed yeast diversity in natural environments is a combined result of the response of each species to habitat conditions, including arrival, growth, and further dispersal, and the biotic interactions among species. In this chapter, we review some recent concepts and tools developed in community ecology and discuss how they may help understand yeast diversity in nature. We address species recognition approaches and the effects of the intraspecific variation and application of molecular operational taxonomic units on the yeast community parameters. Community ecology tools discussed in this chapter include diversity (taxonomic and functional), quantity, priority effects, species richness estimators, and species-abundance distribution. Additionally, we compare the use of community composition and community structure parameters in the literature. Concepts such as frequent (vs. rare), autochthonous (vs. transient or allochthonous) and specialist (vs. generalist) yeast species are also discussed through this chapter.