Microbial interactions lead to rapid micro-scale successions on model marine particles
Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2016 papers
Abstract
In the ocean, organic particles harbour diverse bacterial communities, which collectively digest and recycle essential nutrients. Traits like motility and exo-enzyme production allow individual taxa to colonize and exploit particle resources, but it remains unclear how community dynamics emerge from these individual traits. Here we track the taxon and trait dynamics of bacteria attached to model marine particles and demonstrate that particle-attached communities undergo rapid, reproducible successions driven by ecological interactions. Motile, particle-degrading taxa are selected for during early successional stages. However, this selective pressure is later relaxed when secondary consumers invade, which are unable to use the particle resource but, instead, rely on carbon from primary degraders. This creates a trophic chain that shifts community metabolism away from the particle substrate. These results suggest that primary successions may shape particle-attached bacterial communities in the ocean and that rapid community-wide metabolic shifts could limit rates of marine particle degradation.
Related Papers
- → Responses of zooplankton body size and community trophic structure to temperature change in a subtropical reservoir(2019)55 cited
- → Variability in sediment microbial communities in a semipermanent stream: impact of drought(2006)53 cited
- → Trophic Structure of Bird Communities in Forest Patches in East-Central Illinois(1983)64 cited
- → Relationship between trophic state and plankton community structure in 21 Sicilian dam reservoirs(1994)30 cited
- Research on Seasonal and Spatial Shifts in River Sediments Microbial Community Structure(2010)