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Unraveling mechanisms of microbial community assembly using naturally replicated microbiomes
In the field of microbial ecology, it is challenging to study mechanisms that affect microbial communities in situ. Primarily, this is due to the high complexity of environmental data. Scientist have always to deal with several unknown parameters while handling environmental samples. However, the Pitch Lake water droplets provide extraordinary model systems that are anthropogenically unaffected and naturally occurring. The microliter-sized water droplets are dispersed in the heavy oil of the Pitch Lake in Trinidad and Tobago and contain different and complex microbial community compositions. They provide a naturally less complicated system because numerous droplets can be sampled at the same time, each representing an independent natural replicate, and because on the first view all droplets have been exposed to the same environmental conditions within the oil reservoir. In this thesis, multiple microbial communities inhabiting the Pitch Lake water droplets were studied to unravel basic mechanisms that play a role in microbial community assembly and how these shape microbial communities. Dispersal was excluded as possible assembly process for the water droplets. A fluid-dynamics model applied to the Pitch Lake oil predicted that it is highly unlikely that droplets fuse amongst themselves. Individual cells are unlikely to disperse between the water droplets due to the low water activity of the oil. Computational modelling manifested that ecological drift and speciation on basis of 16S rRNA amplicon sequences are unimportant for the microbial assembly processes in the Pitch Lake droplet microbial communities. Because dispersal, ecological drift and speciation processes were ruled out we conclude that mainly selection has shaped the microbial community patterns determined by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Indeed, we provide experimental evidence that selection is shaping the communities. Ion chromatography measurements of single water droplets demonstrated that geochemistry within the water droplets is variable ...
Unraveling mechanisms of microbial community assembly using naturally replicated microbiomes
In the field of microbial ecology, it is challenging to study mechanisms that affect microbial communities in situ. Primarily, this is due to the high complexity of environmental data. Scientist have always to deal with several unknown parameters while handling environmental samples. However, the Pitch Lake water droplets provide extraordinary model systems that are anthropogenically unaffected and naturally occurring. The microliter-sized water droplets are dispersed in the heavy oil of the Pitch Lake in Trinidad and Tobago and contain different and complex microbial community compositions. They provide a naturally less complicated system because numerous droplets can be sampled at the same time, each representing an independent natural replicate, and because on the first view all droplets have been exposed to the same environmental conditions within the oil reservoir. In this thesis, multiple microbial communities inhabiting the Pitch Lake water droplets were studied to unravel basic mechanisms that play a role in microbial community assembly and how these shape microbial communities. Dispersal was excluded as possible assembly process for the water droplets. A fluid-dynamics model applied to the Pitch Lake oil predicted that it is highly unlikely that droplets fuse amongst themselves. Individual cells are unlikely to disperse between the water droplets due to the low water activity of the oil. Computational modelling manifested that ecological drift and speciation on basis of 16S rRNA amplicon sequences are unimportant for the microbial assembly processes in the Pitch Lake droplet microbial communities. Because dispersal, ecological drift and speciation processes were ruled out we conclude that mainly selection has shaped the microbial community patterns determined by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Indeed, we provide experimental evidence that selection is shaping the communities. Ion chromatography measurements of single water droplets demonstrated that geochemistry within the water droplets is variable ...
Unraveling mechanisms of microbial community assembly using naturally replicated microbiomes
Voskuhl, Lisa (author) / Meckenstock, Rainer U.
2024-03-25
Theses
Electronic Resource
English
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