Community composition drives siderophore dynamics in multispecies bacterial communities

BMC Ecology and Evolution

Research

Timothy G. Barraclough¹  Christopher T. Culbert²  Siobhán O’Brien³ 

[1] Department of Biology, University of Oxford, 11a Mansfield Road, OX1 3SZ, Oxford, UK;Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, SL5 7PY, Ascot, Berkshire, UK;Department of Microbiology, School of Genetics and Microbiology, Moyne Institute of Preventive Medicine, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland;

关键词: Microbial communities;    Public goods;    Species interactions;    Community ecology;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12862-023-02152-8

 received in 2022-11-29, accepted in 2023-08-17,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundIntraspecific public goods are commonly shared within microbial populations, where the benefits of public goods are largely limited to closely related conspecifics. One example is the production of iron-scavenging siderophores that deliver iron to cells via specific cell envelope receptor and transport systems. Intraspecific social exploitation of siderophore producers is common, since non-producers avoid the costs of production but retain the cell envelope machinery for siderophore uptake. However, little is known about how interactions between species (i.e., interspecific interactions) can shape intraspecific public goods exploitation. Here, we predicted that strong competition for iron between species in diverse communities will increase costs of siderophore cooperation, and hence drive intraspecific exploitation. We examined how increasing microbial community species diversity shapes intraspecific social dynamics by monitoring the growth of siderophore producers and non-producers of the plant-growth promoting bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens, embedded within tree-hole microbial communities ranging from 2 to 15 species.ResultsWe find, contrary to our prediction, that siderophore production is favoured at higher levels of community species richness, driven by increased likelihood of encountering key species that reduce the growth of siderophore non-producing (but not producing) strains of P. fluorescens.ConclusionsOur results suggest that maintaining a diverse soil microbiota could partly contribute to the maintenance of siderophore production in natural communities.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2023

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