Managing microbial communities with functional ecology

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Long-term goal. Sustainable and effective methods for water treatment are urgently needed to improve efficiency and prevent negative health impacts of water contaminants on people and the natural environment. Biotechnologies based on open microbial systems are an attractive solution due to their high potential for contaminant mineralization and energy efficiency. By designing and operating these systems with ecological principles in mind, we can improve their effectiveness and stability. The long-term goal of my program is to develop a mechanistic understanding of microbial community structure and function that is guided by ecological theory, microbial physiology and modelling, and apply this to biological water treatment systems. Short-term objectives. In the next five years, my group will pursue the following objectives: 1) Describe long-term community assembly processes of drinking water biofiltration communities 2) Elucidate the role of dispersal in community assembly and determinants of invasion 3) Investigate the physiology and ecology of manganese oxidizing bacteria. Approach. By combining analysis of full-scale systems and modelling, I will describe community dynamics and assembly processes of drinking water biofilter communities. Lab-scale systems will examine how dispersal influences the relative importance of deterministic and stochastic processes in community assembly, how this impacts biodiversity, and the influence of dispersal on functional and phylogenetic stability. Notably, the relative importance of selection and dispersal at different strengths will be investigated. Manganese is a priority pollutant in drinking water that is optimally removed using biological treatment. An incomplete understanding of the physiology and ecology of manganese oxidizing bacteria currently limits our ability to develop ecological solutions to retain manganese oxidizing bacteria, and ensure predictable activity in biofilter communities. This work will examine the physiology of diverse manganese oxidizing bacteria and use them as a model to test factors influencing invasion success inferred from both niche and neutral perspectives. The results of this work will shed light on ecological solutions for enhancing bioaugmentation. Impact. Improved efficiency and novel treatment designs could result in major societal and environmental benefits, including improved contaminant treatment and water quality, greenhouse gas mitigation, improved resource recovery, and reduction in the physical and environmental footprints of engineered biological systems. The development of biotechnologies for manganese removal from drinking water will provide new treatment prospects to achieve recently established drinking water regulations. New insights into bioaugmentation through invasion ecology could have far reaching effects in the field of contaminant treatment. This work will investigate fundamental questions in microbial ecology with impacts in multiple fields.