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The Functional Significance of Bacterial Predators

Journal Article · · mBio (Online)
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  1. Northern Arizona Univ., Flagstaff, AZ (United States)
  2. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  3. Univ. of Exeter (United Kingdom)
  4. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  5. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)
  6. West Virginia Univ., Morgantown, WV (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Predation structures food webs, influences energy flow, and alters rates and pathways of nutrient cycling through ecosystems, effects that are well documented for macroscopic predators. In the microbial world, predatory bacteria are common, yet little is known about their rates of growth and roles in energy flows through microbial food webs, in part because these are difficult to quantify. Here, we show that growth and carbon uptake were higher in predatory bacteria compared to nonpredatory bacteria, a finding across 15 sites, synthesizing 82 experiments and over 100,000 taxon-specific measurements of element flow into newly synthesized bacterial DNA. Obligate predatory bacteria grew 36% faster and assimilated carbon at rates 211% higher than nonpredatory bacteria. These differences were less pronounced for facultative predators (6% higher growth rates, 17% higher carbon assimilation rates), though high growth and carbon assimilation rates were observed for some facultative predators, such as members of the genera Lysobacter and Cytophaga, both capable of gliding motility and wolf-pack hunting behavior. Added carbon substrates disproportionately stimulated growth of obligate predators, with responses 63% higher than those of nonpredators for the Bdellovibrionales and 81% higher for the Vampirovibrionales, whereas responses of facultative predators to substrate addition were no different from those of nonpredators. This finding supports the ecological theory that higher productivity increases predator control of lower trophic levels. These findings also indicate that the functional significance of bacterial predators increases with energy flow and that predatory bacteria influence element flow through microbial food webs.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830; AC52-07NA27344; SCW1632; SC0020172; SC0016207; SCW1024; SCW1590; DEB-1241094; DEB-1645596; DEB-1655357; EAR-1124078; SCW1424
OSTI ID:
1780514
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1808302; OSTI ID: 1867089
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-161233; LLNL-JRNL-826204
Journal Information:
mBio (Online), Vol. 12, Issue 2; ISSN 2150-7511
Publisher:
American Society for Microbiology (ASM)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Glucose triggers strong taxon‐specific responses in microbial growth and activity: insights from DNA and RNA qSIP journal November 2019
Regulation of priming effect by soil organic matter stability over a broad geographic scale journal November 2019
Controls on Soil Organic Carbon Partitioning and Stabilization in the California Sierra Nevada journal July 2018
Bacterial colonization of minerals in grassland soils is selective and highly dynamic journal August 2019
What do we know about soil carbon destabilization? journal July 2019

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59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
18O-H2O
Bdellovibrio
food webs
predator
qSIP
stable isotope probing
top-down control
trophic interactions
58 GEOSCIENCES
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
18O-H2O
Bdellovibrio