Nutrients' control over microbial communities

Resource availability is a major structuring force of natural communities that has been the object of theoretical exploration since the formulation of the principle of competitive exclusion at the beginning of the XX century. By contrast, experiments on the effects of changes in resource pools on the diversity and structure of communities have lagged behind, with resource-diversity relationship being especially underexplored in the microbial realm. By experimentally manipulating the quality and quantity of available nutrients in natural microbial microcosms, my work aims at bridging the gap between theory and experiments and gaining a mechanistic understanding of the principles governing how available nutrients shape microbial communities. In this talk, I will show that the number and quality of available nutrients determine community richness, while their quantity solely affects community structure. I will interpret these results in the light of consumer resource models and I will highlight the connections between features of microbial metabolism promoted by available nutrients and observed changes in community outcomes.