JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY

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Improved understanding of the mechanisms that drive the generation, maintenance, and loss of species diversity is among the primary objectives of ecology. The niche- partitioning concept provided an early explanation for species coexistence and diversity. A growing body of theoretical research has demonstrated that dynamic processes operating across a range of (i) biological levels of organization (individuals, species, and communities) and (ii) spatio-temporal scales create the “niches” that permit species coexistence in structured environments. These theoretical considerations require corroboration through empirical experimentation, but practical logistical difficulties often restrict experiments to limited scales of space and time that are much smaller than those embodied in theoretical simulations. In this review, I argue that natural microcosms can be used to resolve this issue by incorporating spatial heterogeneity, spatio-temporal scaling and dispersal in patchy environments. Using case studies with different types of natural microcosms ([i] carrion flies on rats, [ii] spore-feeding beetles on bracket fungi, and [iii] protozoans in pitcher plant leaves), I identified three key mechanisms driving species diversity: probabilistic spatial aggregation, competition-colonization dynamics, and assembly-history dynamics; I also reviewed associated schematic models to test the putative mechanisms. My analyses demonstrated that natural microcosm experiments were able to reveal the linkages between the maintenance of species diversity, spatio-temporal scaling and environmental heterogeneity in natural systems.

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Aya Town and its surroundings in Miyazaki Prefecture, southern Japan, were registered as the Aya Biosphere Reserve (Aya BR) by UNESCO in 2012. We report initial responses after this registration in terms of the number of tourists, population, amount of furusato tax paid (by which taxpayers can choose to divert tax to their municipality from their income and residence tax), and the management system of Aya Town. We observed initial effects of an increase in the amount of furusato tax paid and changes in the town management system connected to the other sections and built several committee to share the information among related actors in Aya Town for three years. We need to continue to monitor the effectiveness of registration of the Aya BR because various steps are needed to implement a new system with multiple stakeholders.

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