Scale-Dependent Heterogeneity Drives Microbial Insurance in Phyllosphere Algal-Bacterial Networks during Lake...

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Microbiology
• Environmental Science

Background:

• Algal-bacterial symbiotic communities in submerged macrophyte phyllosphere show promise for lake restoration.
• Understanding their response to environmental heterogeneity is limited due to overlooked microbial network complexity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the response mechanisms of phyllosphere microbial communities to environmental heterogeneity.
• To explore the role of these communities in ecosystem resilience and lake restoration.

Main Methods:

• Integrated controlled mesocosm experiments with field lake surveys across trophic gradients.
• Employed multilevel network analysis to study community assembly and interactions.
• Utilized machine learning models to predict community behavior.

Main Results:

• Increased environmental heterogeneity promoted stochastic assembly and niche differentiation.
• Enhanced functional metabolic complementarity in algal-bacterial networks, strengthening ecosystem resilience.
• Machine learning models showed predictive accuracy but also systematic biases when applied to natural lakes, indicating scale-dependent complexity.

Conclusions:

• Environmental heterogeneity drives microbial insurance, a key stabilizing mechanism for aquatic ecosystems.
• Findings challenge the notion that homogeneous environments favor microbial functional redundancy.
• Incorporating ecological complexity into cross-scale restoration strategies is advocated.