Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Microbiology
The macroevolutionary consequences of niche construction in microbial metabolism
Published: 2021-06-01
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Population Biology, Systems Biology
Microorganisms display a stunning metabolic diversity. Understanding the origin of this diversity requires understanding how macroevolutionary processes such as innovation and diversification play out in the microbial world. Metabolic networks, which govern microbial resource use, can evolve through different mechanisms, e.g. horizontal gene transfer or de novo evolution of enzymes and pathways. [...]
Understanding plant microbiomes requires a G x E framework
Published: 2021-05-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Plant microbiomes have become one of the hottest topics in plant biology. Driven by the increased availability of metagenome sequencing methods, analyses of plant-associated microbiomes have been skyrocketing during the last decade. They have generally taken one of two main perspectives: (1) a focus on the microbiome itself, where researchers describe microbiome diversity and attempt to [...]
Spillback in the Anthropocene: the risk of human-to-wildlife pathogen transmission for conservation and public health
Published: 2021-04-12
Subjects: Bacteriology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Public Health, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Microbiology and Immunobiology, Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health, Virology
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has led to increased concern over transmission of pathogens from humans to animals (“spillback”) and its potential to threaten conservation and public health. To assess this threat, we reviewed published evidence of spillback events, including instances where spillback could threaten conservation and human health. We identified 97 verified examples of spillback, involving [...]
Microbial effects on plant phenology and fitness
Published: 2021-02-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Sciences
Plant development and the timing of developmental events (phenology) are tightly coupled with plant fitness. A variety of internal and external factors determine the timing and fitness consequences of these life-history transitions. Microbes interact with plants throughout their life-history and impact host phenology. This review summarizes current mechanistic and theoretical knowledge [...]
Perspective: The evolutionary dangers of high COVID case counts
Published: 2021-02-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Virology
The recent simultaneous appearance of numerous highly contagious variants of SARS-CoV-2 demonstrate that the rate of adaptive evolution in the SARS-CoV-2 population is accelerating. It is no longer appropriate to focus only on epidemiological goals like flattening the curve and vaccinating to achieve herd immunity. We are now in a new phase of the pandemic, in which we must also focus on the [...]
Soil fungal diversity and community assembly: Affected by island size or type?
Published: 2021-01-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Fungi have huge biodiversity and play important roles in soil biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem services in island ecosystems. Although island biogeography has been widely studied in macroorganisms, the relationship between soil fungal diversity and area in islands is less documented. Here, we examine soil fungal communities of 18 oceanic islands belonged to two types of islands (8 general [...]
Evolutionary Pathways and Trajectories in Antibiotic Resistance
Published: 2021-01-27
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Pathogenic Microbiology
Evolution is the hallmark of life. Descriptions of the evolution of microorganisms have provided a wealth of information, but knowledge regarding “what happened” has precluded a deeper understanding of “how” evolution has proceeded, as in the case of antimicrobial resistance. The difficulty in answering the “how” question lies in the multihierarchical dimensions of evolutionary processes, nested [...]
Assembly processes lead to divergent soil fungal communities within and among twelve forest ecosystems along a latitudinal gradient
Published: 2021-01-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
- Latitudinal gradients provide opportunities to better understand soil fungal community assembly and its relationship with vegetation, climate, soil and ecosystem function. Understanding the mechanisms underlying community assembly is essential for predicting compositional responses to changing environments. - We quantified the relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes in [...]
Ecological Countermeasures for Pandemic Prevention: When Ecological Restoration is a Human Health Imperative
Published: 2020-12-06
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Bacteriology, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, Integrative Biology, International Public Health, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Population Biology, Public Health, Systems Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Microbiology and Immunobiology, Veterinary Pathology and Pathobiology, Zoology
Ecological restoration should be regarded as a public health service. Unfortunately, the lack of quantitative linkages between environmental and human health has limited recognition of these principle. Advent of COVID-19 pandemic provides the impetus for the further discussion. We propose ecological countermeasures as highly targeted, landscape-based interventions to arrest the drivers of land [...]
How microbes can, and cannot, be used to assess soil health
Published: 2020-09-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Healthy soils are critical to the health of ecosystems, economies, and human populations. Thus, it is widely acknowledged that soil health is important to quantify, both for assessment and as a tool to help guide management strategies. What is less clear is how soil health should actually be measured, especially considering that soil health is not exclusively a product of soil physical and [...]
VIRUS-HOST RELATIONSHIPS: AN OVERVIEW
Published: 2020-08-31
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Virology
In order to survive in nature, different pathogens follow different procedures to manipulate their host plants for the pathogen favor. Plant viruses are not an exception of this rule. They are often found to alter the host plant traits in the way that affects the community of organisms in the host plant as well as the vectoring insects. It has been indicated that virus-infected plants are more [...]
The quest for absolute abundance: the use of internal standards for DNA-based microbial and community ecology
Published: 2020-03-27
Subjects: Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology
To characterize microbiomes and other ecological assemblages, ecologists routinely sequence and compare loci that differ among focal taxa. Counts of these sequences convey information regarding the occurrence and relative abundances of taxa, but provide no direct measure of their absolute abundances, due to the technical limitations of the sequencing process. The relative abundances in [...]
Yeast lines selected for non-quiescence show increased protein content
Published: 2019-08-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Nutrition, Organismal Biological Physiology
Increasing demand for food production requires improvements as well as openness to new sources of protein. Single Cell Protein derived from microbes has been intensively studied as a supplement for traditional sources of proteins, both for animal feed and direct human consumption. Food grade yeast, including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has already been successfully used in industry. Here, we [...]
Experimentally altered rainfall regimes and host root traits affect grassland arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities
Published: 2019-07-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Future climate scenarios predict changes in rainfall regimes. These changes are expected to affect plants via effects on the expression of root traits associated with water and nutrient uptake. Associated microorganisms may also respond to these new precipitation regimes, either directly in response to changes in the soil environment or indirectly in response to altered root trait expression. We [...]
Temporal dynamics of mycorrhizal fungal communities and co-associations with grassland plant communities following experimental manipulation of rainfall
Published: 2019-07-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Climate models project overall a reduction in rainfall amounts and shifts in the timing of rainfall events in mid-latitudes and sub-tropical dry regions, which threatens the productivity and diversity of grasslands. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi may help plants to cope with expected changes but may also be impacted by changing rainfall, either via the direct effects of low soil moisture on [...]