NEW YORK, June 25 (UPI) -- Biodiversity of the world's plant life may depend on species-specific "feedback" between plants and soil-dwelling organisms in the environment, a report says.
A report in the journal Nature on tropical tree populations says these local ecological interaction processes of negative feedback between tropical trees and soil organisms can explain biodiversity, and may represent a general mechanism for generating plant species diversity across varied ecosystems, a Nature release said Friday.
Report author Scott Mangan says these processes can predict tree abundance in local ecosystems.
Tree species with the greatest populations are those least susceptible to detrimental effects in their associated soil organism communities, while rarer species may have strong negative feedback to soil conditions, the report says.
