RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Trade-off between competition ability and invulnerability to predation in marine microbes; protist grazing versus viral lysis effects
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.10.09.463787
DO 10.1101/2021.10.09.463787
A1 Jinny Wu Yang
A1 Feng-Hsun Chang
A1 Yi-Chun Yeh
A1 An-Yi Tsai
A1 Kuo-Ping Chiang
A1 Fuh-Kwo Shiah
A1 Gwo-Ching Gong
A1 Chih-hao Hsieh
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/10/09/2021.10.09.463787.abstract
AB Trade-offs between competition ability and invulnerability to predation are important mechanisms explaining how predation promotes bacterial diversity. However, existence of these trade-offs has apparently not been investigated in natural marine bacterial communities. Here, we address this question with growth-based measurements for each marine bacterial taxon by conducting on-board dilution experiments to manipulate predation pressure and using high-throughput sequencing to assess the response of bacterial communities. We determined that bacterial taxa with a higher predation-free growth rate were accompanied with higher predation-caused mortality, supporting existence of competitiveness-invulnerability trade-off. This trade-off was stronger and more consistent under viral lysis than protist grazing. In addition, predation generally flattened out the rank-abundance distribution and increased the evenness and richness of the bacterial community. These findings supported the “Kill-the-Winner” hypothesis. All experiments supported a significant competitiveness-invulnerability trade-off, but there was substantial variation among bacterial communities in response to predation across experiments conducted in various sites and seasons. Therefore, we inferred that the Kill-the-Winner hypothesis is important but likely not the only deterministic mechanism explaining how predation shapes bacterial assemblages in natural marine systems.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.