Abstract
Trait-based approaches provide a mechanistic framework to understand and predict the structure and functioning of microbial communities. Resource utilization traits and trade-offs are among key microbial traits that describe population dynamics and competition among microbes. Several important trade-offs have been identified for prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbial taxa that define contrasting ecological strategies and contribute to species coexistence and diversity. The shape, dimensionality, and hierarchy of trade-offs may determine coexistence patterns and need to be better characterized. Laboratory measured resource utilization traits can be used to explain temporal and spatial structure and dynamics of natural microbial communities and predict biogeochemical impacts. Global environmental change can alter microbial community composition through altering resource utilization by different microbes and, consequently, may modify biogeochemical impacts of microbes.
Highlights
Understanding the structure, dynamics and functioning of diverse microbial communities, and their effects on biogeochemical cycles has become one of the most fast-moving and exciting areas in biology
There are many other microbial traits that are important for understanding the structure and dynamics of communities, such as traits determining responses to diverse environmental factors, quorum sensing traits, dormancy, etc., but we focus on resource utilization traits because they provide the most direct link between microbial community structure and biogeochemistry and are well described and modeled for many microbes
As it is unrealistic to expect that we can measure traits of most microbes from natural communities, given the incredible microbial diversity and culturing difficulties, could we focus on traits of ecologically/biogeochemically important species to capture major patterns in community structure and dynamics? Some studies indicate that a relatively small fraction of species in microbial communities may be responsible for the majority of biogeochemical functions (Gobet et al, 2012)
Summary
Understanding the structure, dynamics and functioning of diverse microbial communities, and their effects on biogeochemical cycles has become one of the most fast-moving and exciting areas in biology. The growth-efficiency trade-off presumably produces different strategies across genotypes and species, and there is partial support for such an evolutionary trade-off in the long-term evolution experiments on E. coli (Novak et al, 2006) Changing environmental conditions, such as the rate, variability, and spatial structure of resource supply, should cause shifts in community structure by changing the optimal strategy (Pfeiffer et al, 2001), and in a fluctuating environment multiple strategies could coexist. Quantifying these trait relationships will permit tighter theory-data linkages that should enhance prediction of community structure and ecosystem processes from environmental conditions Developing this approach will require many trait measurements on many species, and an increased focus on higher trophic levels and pathogens to complement our understanding of resource utilization traits. Integrating more complete genomic and metabolic network information into quantitative indices and relating them to resource utilization traits through multivariate models could yield predictive relationships
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