The “MGP analysis” created by Dr. J. Aoki in 1983 and the “100 oribatid species” system proposed by Aoki in 1995, both for using oribatid communities as bioindicators, are described herein and compared to some other bioindicator protocols. By using the term “naturalness”, Aoki proposed to explain human impact on a gradient of several environments ranging from urban boulevard trees to intact for...

Past research demonstrating the importance plant-microbe interactions as drivers of ecosystem succession has focused on how plants condition soil microbial communities, impacting subsequent plant performance and plant community assembly. These studies, however, largely treat microbial communities as a black box. In this study, we sought to examine how emblematic shifts from early successional A...

Living plant diversity (excluding the litter issue) may affect below-ground properties and processes, which is critical to obtaining an integrated biodiversity-ecosystem functioning theory. However, related patterns and underlying mechanisms have rarely been examined, especially lacking long-term evidence. We conducted a factorial crossed sample survey to examine the effects of plant diversity ...

Although we understand the ecological processes eliciting changes in plant community composition during secondary succession, we do not understand whether co-occurring changes in plant detritus shape saprotrophic microbial communities in soil. In this study, we investigated soil microbial composition and function across an old-field chronosequence ranging from 16 to 86 years following agricultu...