English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Microbes are often discussed in terms of dichotomies such ascopiotrophic/oligotrophic and fast/slow-growing microbes, defined using thecharacterisation of microbial growth in isolated cultures. The dichotomies areusually qualitative and/or study-specific, sometimes precluding clear-cutresults interpretation. We are able to interpret microbial dichotomies as lifehistory strategies by combining ecology theory with Monod curves, a classicallaboratory tool of bacterial physiology. Monod curves relate the specificgrowth rate of a microbe with the concentration of a limiting nutrient, andprovide quantities that directly correspond to key ecological parameters inMcArthur and Wilsons r/K selection theory, Tilmans resource competition andcommunity structure theory and Grimes triangle of life strategies. Theresulting model allows us to reconcile the copiotrophic/oligotrophic andfast/slow-growing dichotomies as different subsamples of a life historystrategy triangle that also includes r/K strategists. We analyzed someecological context by considering the known viable carbon sources forheterotrophic microbes in the framework of community structure theory. Thispartly explains the microbial diversity observed using metagenomics. In sum,ecology theory in combination with Monod curves can be a unifying quantitativeframework for the study of natural microbial communities, calling for theintegration of modern laboratory and field experiments.

Ecology theory disentangles microbial dichotomies