How microbial communities emerge

- researchers create new framework to help understand process

Swansea University

Virtually all multicellular organisms on Earth live in symbiotic associations with very large and complex microbial communities known as microbiomes.

New research has just been published aimed at offering a complete understanding how those relationships form.

Computational ecologist Dr Miguel Lurgi explores how associations between complex bacterial communities and multicellular hosts emerge in nature by combining theory with empirical work.

For his latest research Dr Lurgi and his colleague Dr Gui Araujo, from the Biosciences Department of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, teamed up with collaborators from the French Scientific Research Council, the University of New South Wales in Australia, and the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, also in Australia.

They set about devising a theoretical framework to gain further knowledge on the emergence of host-associated complex microbiomes. Their insights have just been published by prestigious journal Trends in Microbiology,

Dr Lurgi said: “We argue that microbiome assembly is a product of ecology and evolution acting together.

“Our research aims at bringing together ecological and evolutionary theory on one hand, and microbial and symbiont ecology and evolution on the other, to create a holistic picture of the assembly of complex symbioses.

“These symbiotic relationships constitute one of the most ancient associations between multicellular organisms and groups of microbes, and, in many cases, they are fundamental to the persistence of both the host and the microbiome.”

The researchers are currently using the proposed framework to investigate microbes inside marine sponges. They are also looking at extending these findings to other microbiomes, eventually allowing for a unified understanding of the intricate nature of symbiotic relationships of multiple species within different groups of hosts and across taxa.

Dr Lurgi is head of the Computational Ecology Lab at Swansea and has been awarded a Leverhulme Trust award for his research project The origin of complex symbioses.

He said: “My main research focus is on the mechanisms behind the emergence of complexity in ecological networks. I develop theoretical models of ecological communities and network dynamics to better understand these mechanisms and the biodiversity patterns they give rise to.”

Dr Lurgi and Dr Araujo are now working on developing the mathematical foundations of the ideas presented in the current paper and have just presented the work at the 19th International Symposium of Microbial Ecology, in South Africa.

Read the paper A mechanistic framework for complex microbe-host symbioses in full

-END-

 

Note to editors:

When reporting this story, please use Swansea University hyperlinks.

Founded in 1920, Swansea University is a research-led, dual campus university located along Swansea Bay in south Wales, UK. Its stunning beachfront campuses and friendly welcome make Swansea University a desirable destination for more than 22,000 students from across the globe. There are three academic faculties, delivering around 450 undergraduate and 350 postgraduate degree programmes.

Swansea is a UK top 30 institution, ranked 25th in the 2024 Guardian University Guide. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, 86% of Swansea University’s overall research and 91% of its research environment were classed as world-leading and internationally excellent, with 86% of its research impact rated outstanding and very considerable.

Swansea University is a registered charity. No. 1138342.  

For more information, please contact Swansea University Press Office. Call 01792 295050, or email:  press@swansea.ac.uk

 

 

---

Journal

Trends in Microbiology

DOI

10.1016/j.tim.2024.08.002