1 INTRODUCTION

Kidron (2018) uses a straw man argument in an attempt to debunk eight putative hydrological‐related paradigms he believes to be “common among hydrologists, ecologists, or microbiologists that investigate biocrusts.” These paradigms relate to the roles of physical crusts and vascular plants in biocrust development, the major drivers (climate, porosity, hydrophobicity, and exopolysaccharides) of hydrology (infiltration and runoff), and the effect of mosses on hydrology and therefore vascular plants. We see two major problems with his arguments. First, they assume that the paradigms in question are generally accepted by biocrust researchers. Second, they are based on Kidron's (2018) world view of biocrusts, which has largely been informed by his own studies from a single, distinctly unique area of sand dunes at the Nizzana Research Site in the Negev Desert, Israel. This narrow focus and the selective use of published material disqualify his arguments. Our collective experience, based on more than 250 person years of biocrust research, and more than 700 scientific publications on biocrusts from all continents including Antarctica, indicates that, far from the straw man arguments proposed by Kidron (2018), there is no evidence to support the existence of a unifying theory that captures the global effects of biocrusts on hydrology. Our collective works demonstrate that, contrary to claims by Kidron (2018), the hydrological effects of biocrusts are strongly nuanced, varying with, but not limited to, differences in ecological context, landscape position, site condition, crust type and composition, climatic zone, soil texture and porosity, surface morphology, and spatial scale (reviewed in Weber, Büdel, & Belnap, 2016). Below, we critically analyse each of Kidron's (2018) paradigms, providing rigorous empirical evidence to show that none represent commonly held views among the biocrust research community.

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评论'基德隆，GJ（2018）。生物壳研究：对八种常见水文相关范式和可疑论文的批判性观点。生态水文学，e2061'

1引言

汲沦（2018）用稻草人的论点试图揭穿八个被认为与水文有关的范式，他认为这是“在研究生物结壳的水文学家，生态学家或微生物学家中很常见的”。这些范例涉及物理壳和维管植物在生物壳发展中的作用，水文（渗透和径流）的主要驱动因素（气候，孔隙度，疏水性和胞外多糖），以及苔藓对水文和维管植物的影响。我们认为他的论点存在两个主要问题。首先，他们假设所讨论的范式已被生物壳研究人员普遍接受。其次，它们基于Kidron's（2018）生物硬壳的世界观，这在很大程度上来自他自己在以色列内盖夫沙漠的尼扎纳研究基地的一个唯一独特的沙丘区域进行的研究。这种狭narrow的关注和对出版材料的选择性使用使他的论点丧失了资格。基于250多年生物外壳研究的经验以及700多种有关包括南极洲在内的所有大陆的生物外壳的科学出版物，我们的集体经验表明，与Kidron（2018）提出的稻草人论点相去甚远，没有证据表明支持统一理论的存在，该理论反映了生物结壳对水文学的全球影响。我们的集体作品表明，与Kidron（2018），生物地壳的水文影响非常细微，随但不限于生态环境，景观位置，场地条件，地壳类型和组成，气候带，土壤质地和孔隙度，表面形态和空间尺度的差异而变化（ Weber，Büdel和Belnap，2016年进行了综述 ）。下面，我们对Kidron（2018）的每个范式进行批判性分析，提供严格的经验证据，以显示没有一个代表生物硬壳研究界普遍持有的观点。