(COMIX) Coupling biofilm diversity and ecosystem functioning: The role of communication and mixing in microbial landscapes.

虽然生物多样性生态系统功能(BEF)的争论已经大大推进了大有机体和理论生态学，但一个核心问题仍然是BEF耦合是否(以及如何)适用于微生物世界。由于微生物在自然生态系统和工程生态系统中的中心作用，这具有巨大的生态和社会意义。这项建议旨在研究生物膜生物多样性与其大规模生态系统后果之间的关系。生物膜是基质封闭的群落，代表了大多数水生态系统中微生物生命的主要形式，但它们的理解明显落后于浮游生态系统。我们将通过从景观生态学中招募概念性知识，将生物膜研究置于明确的空间背景下。通过模型和实验之间的对话，这将使我们能够开发一个多尺度计算模型，可以量化生物膜侵入性和多样性、流体动力学混合和群体感应之间的相互作用，在一系列不同的空间尺度上。我们将从小的空间尺度(&lt；0.01m)开始，并以最简单的假设开始，即完全随机的来自同源社区的社区集合不受混合和交流的影响。然后，我们将系统地提高规模(&gt；1000米)，依次增加生物膜表面形貌、分散性、流体动力学和群体感应的复杂性，并将模型预测与实验观察进行比较。最终，我们将把溪流中的硝化菌生物多样性与氮循环联系起来，并将其输出到更大的下游生态系统。COMIX将大大有助于弥合微生物学和生态学之间已形成的概念鸿沟，推动微生物生态跨尺度的数学建模，并将是一个独特的机会，以量身定做，最重要的是，测试微生物地形上的景观和入侵生态学的理论。

While the biodiversity ecosystem functioning (BEF) debate has considerably advanced macroorganismic and theoretical ecology, a central question remains whether (and how) the BEF coupling applies to the microbial world. This is of immense ecological and societal relevance because of the central role of micro organisms in natural and engineered ecosystems. This proposal aims at studying the relationship between biofilm biodiversity and its large-scale ecosystem consequences. Biofilms are matrix-enclosed communities that represent the dominant form of microbial life in most aqueous ecosystems, yet their understanding significantly lags behind their planktonic counterparts. We will place biofilm research in an explicitly spatial context by recruiting conceptual knowledge from landscape ecology. Dialoguing between modelling and experiments, this will allow us to develop a multi-scale computational model that can quantify the interplay between biofilm invasibility and diversity, hydrodynamic mixing and quorum sensing over a range of different spatial scales. We will start at small spatial scales (<0.01 m) and with the simplest assumption that completely random community assembly from a homogeneous source community is unaffected by mixing and communication. We will then systematically move up in scale (> 1000 m) by successively adding complexity from biofilm surface topography, dispersal, hydrodynamics and quorum sensing, and by comparing model predictions with the experimental observations. Ultimately, we will link nitrifier biodiversity in streams to nitrogen cycling and export to larger downstream ecosystems. COMIX will significantly contribute to bridge the conceptual gap that has developed between microbiology and ecology, advance mathematical modelling in microbial ecology across scales, and will be a unique opportunity to tailor and, most importantly, test theories from landscape and invasion ecology on microbial terrain.