Replicating community dynamics reveals how initial composition shapes the functional outcomes of bacterial communities
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
García, Alberto Pascual
Rivett, Damian W
Jones, Matt Lloyd
Bell, Thomas
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Bacterial communities play key roles in global biogeochemical cycles, industry, agriculture, human health, and animal husbandry. There is therefore great interest in understanding bacterial community dynamics so that they can be controlled and engineered to optimise ecosystem services. We assess the reproducibility and predictability of bacterial community dynamics by creating a frozen archive of hundreds of naturally-occurring bacterial communities that we repeatedly revive and track in a standardised, complex resource environment. Replicate communities follow reproducible trajectories and the community dynamics closely map to ecosystem functioning. However, even under standardised conditions, the communities exhibit tipping-points, where small differences in initial community composition create divergent compositional and functional outcomes. The predictability of community trajectories therefore requires detailed knowledge of rugged compositional landscapes where ecosystem properties are not the inevitable result of prevailing environmental conditions but can be tilted toward different outcomes depending on the initial community composition. Our results shed light on the relationship between composition and function, opening new avenues to understand the feasibility and limitations of function prediction in complex microbial communities.
Date Issued
2025-02-26
Date Acceptance
2025-02-26
Citation
Nature Communications, 2025, 16
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
16
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
10.1038/s41467-025-57591-2
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
3002
Date Publish Online
2025-03-31