Abstract
Microbial life in soil is perceived as one of the most interesting ecological systems, with microbial communities exhibiting remarkable adaptability to vast dynamic environmental conditions. At the same time, it is a notoriously challenging system to understand due to its complexity including physical, chemical, and biological factors in synchrony. This study presents a spatially-resolved model of microbial dynamics on idealised rough soil surfaces represented as patches with different (roughness) properties that preserve the salient hydration physics of real surfaces. Cell level microbial interactions are considered within an individual-based formulation including dispersion and various forms of trophic dependencies (competition, mutualism). The model provides new insights into mechanisms affecting microbial community dynamics and gives rise to spontaneous formation of microbial community spatial patterns. The framework is capable of representing many interacting species and provides diversity metrics reflecting surface conditions and their evolution over time. A key feature of the model is its spatial scalability that permits representation of microbial processes from cell-level (micro-metric scales) to soil representative volumes at sub-metre scales. Several illustrative examples of microbial trophic interactions and population dynamics highlight the potential of the proposed modelling framework to quantitatively study soil microbial processes. The model is highly applicable in a wide range spanning from quantifying spatial organisation of multiple species under various hydration conditions to predicting microbial diversity residing in different soils.
Highlights
Soil microbial activity drives some of the most globally important biogeochemical cycles, which are prominent in nutrient cycling in soils, purification of water, and a range of other ecosystem services [1,2,3]
Field scale studies of soil microbial ecology have focused on deducing empirical relations between microbial activity and various services related to agricultural production, general ecosystem services, or climate change issues [21,22,23,24,25,26]
The key element of water retention is encapsulated in patch roughness properties that collectively honours soil water retention properties and aqueous phase distribution with matric potential
Summary
Soil microbial activity drives some of the most globally important biogeochemical cycles (carbon, nitrogen), which are prominent in nutrient cycling in soils, purification of water, and a range of other ecosystem services [1,2,3]. The complex soil matrix supports and maintains the immense microbial diversity within physically and chemically distinctive microhabitats that are in constant state of change [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. Field scale studies of soil microbial ecology have focused on deducing empirical relations between microbial activity and various services related to agricultural production, general ecosystem services, or climate change issues [21,22,23,24,25,26]. Progress in molecular-genetic based methods and rapid expansion in identification of microbial species were instrumental in quantifying soil diversity and population dynamics, but their application to resolving ecological questions have been limited [27,28,29,30,31]
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