Eco-evolutionary dynamics in microbial interactions

Abstract

Microbes play an important role in ecosystem functioning and human health. A key feature of microbial interactions is a feedback system in which they modify the physical environment and react to it. Recently, it has been shown that the ecological consequences of microbial interactions driven by the modification of their surrounding pH environment can be predicted from the effects of their metabolic properties on pH. The optimum environmental pH for a given species can adaptively change in response to the changes in environmental pH that are induced by them. However, the mechanisms underlying the effect of these adaptive changes in pH niche on microbial coexistence are yet to be explored. In this study, I theoretically demonstrate that ecological theory can only accurately predict the qualitative ecological consequences if the growth and pH change rates are the same for each species, which suggests that adaptive pH niche changes can generally make ecological consequence predictions based on ecological theory difficult.