Abstract
Determining the drivers of microbial community assembly is a central theme of microbial ecology, and chemical ecologists seek to characterize how secondary metabolites mediate these assembly patterns. Environmental structure affects how communities assemble and what metabolic pathways aid in that assembly. Here, we bridged these two perspectives by addressing the chemical drivers of community assembly within a spatially structured landscape with varying oxygen availability. We hypothesized that structured environments would favor higher microbial diversity and metabolite diversity. We anticipated that the production of a compound would be more advantageous in a structured environment (less mixing) compared to an unstructured environment (more mixing), where the molecule would have a diminished local effect. We observed this to be partially true in our experiments: structured environments had similar microbial diversity compared to unstructured environments but differed significantly in the metabolites produced. We also found that structured environments selected for communities with higher evenness, rather than communities with higher richness. This supports the idea that when characterizing the drivers of community assembly, it matters less about who is there and more about what they are doing. Overall, these data contribute to a growing effort to approach microbial community assembly with interdisciplinary tools and perspectives.
Highlights
A central focus of microbial ecology is characterizing the forces that govern microbial community assembly
Where microbial ecology often halts is in bridging the gap between biodiversity/community assembly and chemical ecology/ chemodiversity [14]
Since many microorganisms naturally exist in a spatially structured, heterogeneous environment like biofilms [3], it is important to characterize the effect of environmental structure on microbial community composition and function
Summary
A central focus of microbial ecology is characterizing the forces that govern microbial community assembly. To test whether environmental structure influenced the richness and evenness of the microbial communities for each dilution, a Levene’s test was used to confirm homogeneity of variance [54] using the r package car [55] before a two-way ANOVA coupled with a Tukey’s honest significant difference test was used to compare differences between shaking and static cultures for each time point in PRISM v9
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
