Uncovering microbial life-history strategies under disturbance: a trait-based computational analysis of anaerobic...

Trait-based approaches are helpful in simplifying ecosystem complexity to explore disturbance-diversity-function relationships. These frameworks classify organisms based on their functional characteristics-traits that influence growth, survival and reproduction-providing a mechanistic basis to understand how communities respond to changes in their environment. The application of these approaches has been successful in ecology, but to date has only been tested in a few microbial ecosystems, namely, soil microbial communities and aerobic bioreactors treating wastewater. Here, we employed Grime's competitor-stress-tolerant-ruderal framework in replicated mesophilic anaerobic bioreactors exposed to a disturbance (biomass removal) with varied frequencies at a constant number of disturbance events for 90 days. Bioreactors were inoculated with sludge from full-scale anaerobic digesters and fed with a mixture of primary and waste activated sludge. A genome-resolved metagenomics approach was utilised to assess the microbial communities in terms of composition and functional potential. We found that communities across the disturbance range were clustered into three groups, suggesting the adoption of a three-way life-history strategy. This study demonstrates, for the first time, the applicability of trait-based life-history strategies in anaerobic microbial systems under disturbance using genome-resolved techniques, providing a new perspective for understanding and managing microbial ecosystems under disturbance conditions.