Community-level selection is an important concept in evolutionary biology and has been predicted to arise in systems that are spatially structured. Here we develop an experimental model for spatially-structured bacterial communities based on coaggregating strains and test their relative fitness under a defined selection pressure. As selection we apply protozoan grazing in a defined, continuous culturing system. We demonstrate that a slow-growing bacterial strain Blastomonas natatoria 2.1, which forms coaggregates with Micrococcus luteus, can outcompete a fast-growing, closely related strain Blastomonas natatoria 2.8 under conditions of protozoan grazing. The competitive benefit provided by spatial structuring has implications for the evolution of natural bacterial communities in the environment. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.
CITATION STYLE
Thomas, T., Kindinger, I., Yu, D., Esvaran, M., Blackall, L., Forehead, H., … Manefield, M. (2011). An experimental model for the spatial structuring and selection of bacterial communities. Journal of Microbiological Methods, 87(2), 165–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mimet.2011.08.010
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