Environmental modulation of microbial communities
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, May, 2020
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | eng |
| Published: |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2022
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/145793 |
| _version_ | 1826200773694849024 |
|---|---|
| author | Abreu, Clare I. (Clare Isabel) |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics. |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics. Abreu, Clare I. (Clare Isabel) |
| author_sort | Abreu, Clare I. (Clare Isabel) |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, May, 2020 |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:41:32Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | mit-1721.1/145793 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:41:32Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1457932022-10-13T03:27:43Z Environmental modulation of microbial communities Abreu, Clare I. (Clare Isabel) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics Physics. Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, May, 2020 Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-166). Microbial communities are crucial to the health of all ecosystems, and their vast diversity constitutes the majority of species on Earth. A single sample of such a community immediately reveals its complexity, but simultaneously the challenges to understanding its form and function. First, a sample provides a snapshot of a community's current state, but fails to explain how hundreds to thousands of species might emerge and remain together. Second, microbial communities are in constant flux, with species abundances changing in response to biotic interactions with each other as well as abiotic environmental conditions, making it difficult to surmise which forces drive community dynamics. In this thesis, I describe the "bottom-up" approach my colleagues and I use to build microbial communities in the laboratory. By using tractable experimental microcosms and tuning particular abiotic parameters while holding others constant, we discover the effects of environmental changes on community structure. Furthermore, we find that we can verify simple theoretical predictions about how the environment changes interactions and, by extension, community composition. We employ and modify a simple phenomenological model, the Lotka-Volterra interspecific competition model, to make predictions about the effects of increasing mortality, increasing temperature, and environmental fluctuations. We verify these predictions with a diverse set of bacterial species engaged in pairwise competition, and use these pairwise results to successfully predict the outcomes of communities of three or more species. Despite the fact that we knew little about the species other than simple attributes such as their growth rates, the model was generally successful, indicating universal behaviors in response to environmental changes. Our results can provide intuition for experimentalists in tuning laboratory conditions, as well as to scientists studying the effect of the environment on field communities by Clare I. Abreu. Ph. D. Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics 2022-10-12T14:59:25Z 2022-10-12T14:59:25Z 2020 2020 Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/145793 1241696632 eng MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 166 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| spellingShingle | Physics. Abreu, Clare I. (Clare Isabel) Environmental modulation of microbial communities |
| title | Environmental modulation of microbial communities |
| title_full | Environmental modulation of microbial communities |
| title_fullStr | Environmental modulation of microbial communities |
| title_full_unstemmed | Environmental modulation of microbial communities |
| title_short | Environmental modulation of microbial communities |
| title_sort | environmental modulation of microbial communities |
| topic | Physics. |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/145793 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT abreuclareiclareisabel environmentalmodulationofmicrobialcommunities |