(COMIX) Coupling biofilm diversity and ecosystem functioning: The role of communication and mixing in microbial landscapes.
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Glasgow
Department Name: Civil Engineering
Abstract
While the biodiversity ecosystem functioning (BEF) debate has considerably advanced macroorganismic and theoretical ecology, a central question remains whether (and how) the BEF coupling applies to the microbial world. This is of immense ecological and societal relevance because of the central role of micro organisms in natural and engineered ecosystems. This proposal aims at studying the relationship between biofilm biodiversity and its large-scale ecosystem consequences. Biofilms are matrix-enclosed communities that represent the dominant form of microbial life in most aqueous ecosystems, yet their understanding significantly lags behind their planktonic counterparts. We will place biofilm research in an explicitly spatial context by recruiting conceptual knowledge from landscape ecology. Dialoguing between modelling and experiments, this will allow us to develop a multi-scale computational model that can quantify the interplay between biofilm invasibility and diversity, hydrodynamic mixing and quorum sensing over a range of different spatial scales. We will start at small spatial scales (<0.01 m) and with the simplest assumption that completely random community assembly from a homogeneous source community is unaffected by mixing and communication. We will then systematically move up in scale (> 1000 m) by successively adding complexity from biofilm surface topography, dispersal, hydrodynamics and quorum sensing, and by comparing model predictions with the experimental observations. Ultimately, we will link nitrifier biodiversity in streams to nitrogen cycling and export to larger downstream ecosystems. COMIX will significantly contribute to bridge the conceptual gap that has developed between microbiology and ecology, advance mathematical modelling in microbial ecology across scales, and will be a unique opportunity to tailor and, most importantly, test theories from landscape and invasion ecology on microbial terrain.
Organisations
Publications
Battin TJ
(2007)
Microbial landscapes: new paths to biofilm research.
in Nature reviews. Microbiology
Besemer K
(2013)
Headwaters are critical reservoirs of microbial diversity for fluvial networks.
in Proceedings. Biological sciences
Liu Z
(2019)
Neutral mechanisms and niche differentiation in steady-state insular microbial communities revealed by single cell analysis.
in Environmental microbiology
Mußmann M
(2011)
Thaumarchaeotes abundant in refinery nitrifying sludges express amoA but are not obligate autotrophic ammonia oxidizers
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Quince C
(2009)
Accurate determination of microbial diversity from 454 pyrosequencing data.
in Nature methods
Quince C
(2008)
The rational exploration of microbial diversity.
in The ISME journal
Tsagkari E
(2017)
A Keystone Methylobacterium Strain in Biofilm Formation in Drinking Water
in Water
Vignaga E
(2013)
Erosion of biofilm-bound fluvial sediments
in Nature Geoscience
Woodcock S
(2017)
Biofilm community succession: a neutral perspective.
in Microbiology (Reading, England)
Woodcock S
(2013)
Modelling the effects of dispersal mechanisms and hydrodynamic regimes upon the structure of microbial communities within fluvial biofilms.
in Environmental microbiology
Woodcock S
(2007)
Neutral assembly of bacterial communities.
in FEMS microbiology ecology