Through decomposition and mineralisation soil microbes are
predicted to have large impacts on plant productivity, species
diversity and richness. Decomposer communities have often
been thought to be highly redundant, but that redundancy probably occurs primarily within groups (e.g. fungal decomposers,
bacterial decomposers, etc.) and may be a product of great spatial
variability (reviewed in Sea¨ la¨ et al., 2005).