In Vitro Community Synergy between Bacterial Soil Isolates Can Be Facilitated by pH Stabilization of the Environment

Understanding interspecies interactions in bacterial communities is important for unraveling species dynamics in naturally occurring communities. These dynamics are fundamental for identifying evolutionary drivers and for the development of efficient biotechnological industry applications. Recently, pH interplay among community members has been identified as a factor affecting community development, and pH stabilization has been demonstrated to result in enhanced community growth. The use of model communities in which the effect of changing pH level can be attributed to specific species contributes to the investigation of community developmental drivers. This contributes to assessment of the extent of emergent behavior and members' contributions to community development. Here, we show that pH stabilization of the microenvironmentin vitro in a synthetic coisolated model community results in synergistic growth. This observation adds to the growing diversity of community interactions leading to enhanced community growth and hints toward pH as a strong driver for community development in diverse environments.