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Latent functional diversity may accelerate microbial community responses to temperature fluctuations

How complex microbial communities respond to climatic fluctuations remains an open question. Due to their relatively short generation times and high functional diversity, microbial populations harbor great potential to respond as a community through a combination of strain-level phenotypic plasticit...

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Autores principales: Smith, Thomas P, Mombrikotb, Shorok, Ransome, Emma, Kontopoulos, Dimitrios - Georgios, Pawar, Samraat, Bell, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9708066/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36444646
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.80867
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author Smith, Thomas P
Mombrikotb, Shorok
Ransome, Emma
Kontopoulos, Dimitrios - Georgios
Pawar, Samraat
Bell, Thomas
author_facet Smith, Thomas P
Mombrikotb, Shorok
Ransome, Emma
Kontopoulos, Dimitrios - Georgios
Pawar, Samraat
Bell, Thomas
author_sort Smith, Thomas P
collection PubMed
description How complex microbial communities respond to climatic fluctuations remains an open question. Due to their relatively short generation times and high functional diversity, microbial populations harbor great potential to respond as a community through a combination of strain-level phenotypic plasticity, adaptation, and species sorting. However, the relative importance of these mechanisms remains unclear. We conducted a laboratory experiment to investigate the degree to which bacterial communities can respond to changes in environmental temperature through a combination of phenotypic plasticity and species sorting alone. We grew replicate soil communities from a single location at six temperatures between 4°C and 50°C. We found that phylogenetically and functionally distinct communities emerge at each of these temperatures, with K-strategist taxa favored under cooler conditions and r-strategist taxa under warmer conditions. We show that this dynamic emergence of distinct communities across a wide range of temperatures (in essence, community-level adaptation) is driven by the resuscitation of latent functional diversity: the parent community harbors multiple strains pre-adapted to different temperatures that are able to ‘switch on’ at their preferred temperature without immigration or adaptation. Our findings suggest that microbial community function in nature is likely to respond rapidly to climatic temperature fluctuations through shifts in species composition by resuscitation of latent functional diversity.
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spelling pubmed-97080662022-11-30 Latent functional diversity may accelerate microbial community responses to temperature fluctuations Smith, Thomas P Mombrikotb, Shorok Ransome, Emma Kontopoulos, Dimitrios - Georgios Pawar, Samraat Bell, Thomas eLife Ecology How complex microbial communities respond to climatic fluctuations remains an open question. Due to their relatively short generation times and high functional diversity, microbial populations harbor great potential to respond as a community through a combination of strain-level phenotypic plasticity, adaptation, and species sorting. However, the relative importance of these mechanisms remains unclear. We conducted a laboratory experiment to investigate the degree to which bacterial communities can respond to changes in environmental temperature through a combination of phenotypic plasticity and species sorting alone. We grew replicate soil communities from a single location at six temperatures between 4°C and 50°C. We found that phylogenetically and functionally distinct communities emerge at each of these temperatures, with K-strategist taxa favored under cooler conditions and r-strategist taxa under warmer conditions. We show that this dynamic emergence of distinct communities across a wide range of temperatures (in essence, community-level adaptation) is driven by the resuscitation of latent functional diversity: the parent community harbors multiple strains pre-adapted to different temperatures that are able to ‘switch on’ at their preferred temperature without immigration or adaptation. Our findings suggest that microbial community function in nature is likely to respond rapidly to climatic temperature fluctuations through shifts in species composition by resuscitation of latent functional diversity. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2022-11-29 /pmc/articles/PMC9708066/ /pubmed/36444646 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.80867 Text en © 2022, Smith et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Smith, Thomas P
Mombrikotb, Shorok
Ransome, Emma
Kontopoulos, Dimitrios - Georgios
Pawar, Samraat
Bell, Thomas
Latent functional diversity may accelerate microbial community responses to temperature fluctuations
title Latent functional diversity may accelerate microbial community responses to temperature fluctuations
title_full Latent functional diversity may accelerate microbial community responses to temperature fluctuations
title_fullStr Latent functional diversity may accelerate microbial community responses to temperature fluctuations
title_full_unstemmed Latent functional diversity may accelerate microbial community responses to temperature fluctuations
title_short Latent functional diversity may accelerate microbial community responses to temperature fluctuations
title_sort latent functional diversity may accelerate microbial community responses to temperature fluctuations
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9708066/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36444646
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.80867
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