Fig. 1.

Bacterial respiration is dependent on increasing phylogenetic richness rather than ecotypic richness. a A direct comparison of activity (μg CO₂ day⁻¹) of the microcosms with mixed-species ((black circle) black, solid line) and mixed-ecotypes only ((grey triangle) grey, dotted line). Community activity was shown to increase as more species were added to a microcosm; however, this effect was not observed as the number of P. aeruginosa ecotypes increased. This observed activity was shown to be predicted by the monocultures (solid black lines represent the trend of the data with the dotted black lines showing the 1:1 relationship for comparison) when considering both b mixed-species, in which the relative abundances were included and c mixed-ecotype microcosms, where activity was divided equally between the isolates