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The ecology of microbial communities in changing chemical environments
Mathematical BiologySpeaker: | Jamie A Lopez, Stanford |
Location: | MSB 2112 |
Start time: | Mon, Feb 10 2025, 4:10PM |
Microbial communities are ubiquitous and exist in ever-changing environments. The impact of this temporal variability on community properties is not well understood at a theoretical level, with existing mathematical models often assuming the existence of stable steady states. To probe this, we develop a mathematical theory of microbial communities in serial dilution culture – a widespread experimental system for microbial ecology in which nutrients are periodically depleted and replenished. We find that the fluctuating nutrient supply of serial dilution culture can drastically alter community diversity, in extreme cases causing community collapse. These changes can be explained by a single ‘early-bird’ effect in which bacteria use early growth advantages to out-grow otherwise superior competitors. We show that the early-bird effect can be used to intuitively predict the effects of environmental changes in our model. We then highlight recent data from experimentalists showing the assembly gut-derived in vitro microbial communities is governed by the early-bird effect. Finally, we discuss two recent extensions of our theory in which we analyze how the ecology of bacterial metabolic regulation and antibiotic resistance are influenced by fluctuating nutrient supply.
Also available on Zoom: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/98969645841