Eco-evolutionary mechanisms underlying critical transitions in microbial communities

• Applicant: Dr. Giannina Hattich
• Subject Area: Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 491260840

The collective activities of microbial communities facilitate industrial processes like wastewater treatment, influence human health and disease, and ultimately drive the cycling of matter and energy through the earth’s biosphere. These communities are continuously shaped through ecological change, evolutionary change, and the feedback between these two processes. However, we know little about how microbial eco-evo feedbacks operate under sustained stress and perturbation, for example due to anthropogenic pressures like climate change or antibiotic usage. Within this proposal I aim to advance our understanding of how eco-evo dynamics generate or prevent critical transitions in microbial communities. Using a combination of experimental evolution and genome sequencing approaches the project will experimentally address whether synthetic microbial communities undergo critical transitions under sustained stress/pressure from antibiotics, pH, and ciliate predation. I will also evaluate how intraspecific trait diversity and evolution are related to community resilience by manually constructing synthetic communities with defined within-species trait distributions (e.g degree of antibiotic resistance) and then subjecting these communities to different antibiotic treatments. In collaboration with other researchers in Finland and Germany I aim to combine the experimental data with theoretical models to further assess the eco-evo contributions and their interactive effect on complex ecosystem dynamics.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: Finland
• Participating Institution: University of Turku ; Department of Biology ; Division of Physiology and Genetics
• Host: Professor Teppo Hiltunen, Ph.D.