Life history strategies among soil bacteria—dichotomy for few, continuum for many

Stone, Bram W. G.; Dijkstra, Paul; Finley, Brianna K.; Fitzpatrick, Raina; Foley, Megan M.; Hayer, Michaela; Hofmockel, Kirsten S.; Koch, Benjamin J.; Li, Junhui; Liu, Xiao Jun A.; Martinez, Ayla; Mau, Rebecca L.; Marks, Jane; Monsaint-Queeney, Victoria; Morrissey, Ember M.; Propster, Jeffrey; Pett-Ridge, Jennifer; Purcell, Alicia M.; Schwartz, Egbert; Hungate, Bruce A.

doi:10.1038/s41396-022-01354-0

Life history strategies among soil bacteria—dichotomy for few, continuum for many

Journal Article · Thu Feb 02 00:00:00 EST 2023 · The ISME Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-022-01354-0· OSTI ID:1923096

; Dijkstra, Paul; ; Fitzpatrick, Raina; ; ; ; ; ; ; Martinez, Ayla; Mau, Rebecca L.; Marks, Jane; ; ; Propster, Jeffrey; ; ; Schwartz, Egbert;

Abstract

Study of life history strategies may help predict the performance of microorganisms in nature by organizing the complexity of microbial communities into groups of organisms with similar strategies. Here, we tested the extent that one common application of life history theory, the copiotroph-oligotroph framework, could predict the relative population growth rate of bacterial taxa in soils from four different ecosystems. We measured the change of in situ relative growth rate to added glucose and ammonium using both 18O–H2O and 13C quantitative stable isotope probing to test whether bacterial taxa sorted into copiotrophic and oligotrophic groups. We saw considerable overlap in nutrient responses across most bacteria regardless of phyla, with many taxa growing slowly and few taxa that grew quickly. To define plausible life history boundaries based on in situ relative growth rates, we applied Gaussian mixture models to organisms’ joint 18O–13C signatures and found that across experimental replicates, few taxa could consistently be assigned as copiotrophs, despite their potential for fast growth. When life history classifications were assigned based on average relative growth rate at varying taxonomic levels, finer resolutions (e.g., genus level) were significantly more effective in capturing changes in nutrient response than broad taxonomic resolution (e.g., phylum level). Our results demonstrate the difficulty in generalizing bacterial life history strategies to broad lineages, and even to single organisms across a range of soils and experimental conditions. We conclude that there is a continued need for the direct measurement of microbial communities in soil to advance ecologically realistic frameworks.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE; USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC05-76RL01830; AC52-07NA27344; SC0016207

OSTI ID:: 1923096

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 2447095
OSTI ID: 2449708

Report Number(s):: LLNL--JRNL-839597; PNNL-SA--169496

Journal Information:: The ISME Journal, Journal Name: The ISME Journal Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 17; ISSN 1751-7362

Publisher:: Oxford University PressCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United Kingdom

Language:: English

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Life history strategies among soil bacteria—dichotomy for few, continuum for many

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