Multispecies bacterial communities can be remarkably stable and resilient even though they consist of cells and species that compete for environmental resources. In silico models suggest that common signals released into the environment may help selected bacterial species cluster at common locations and that sharing of public goods (i.e. molecules produced and released for mutual benefit) can s...

Positive biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships are generally attributed to two mechanisms: complementarity and selection. These mechanisms have been primarily examined using plant communities, whereas bacterial communities remain largely unexplored. Moreover, it remains uncertain how predation by single or multiple predators affects these mechanisms. Here using 465 bacterial microcos...

Prebiotics are selectively fermentable dietary compounds that result in changes in the composition and/or activity of the intestinal microbiota, thus conferring benefits upon host health. In veterinary medicine, commercially available products containing prebiotics have not been well studied with regard to the changes they trigger on the composition of the gut microbiota. This study evaluated t...

Symbiotic microbial communities may interact with infectious pathogens sharing a common host. The microbiome may limit pathogen infection or, conversely, an invading pathogen can disturb the microbiome. Documentation of such relationships during naturally occurring disease outbreaks is rare, and identifying causal links from field observations is difficult. This study documented the effects of ...

The microbial communities associated with algal blooms play a pivotal role in organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycling in freshwater ecosystems. However, there have been few studies focused on unveiling the dynamics of bacterial and fungal communities during the outbreak and decline of algal blooms in drinking water reservoirs. To address this issue, the compositions of bacterial and fun...

Soil ecologists have debated the relative importance of dispersal limitation and ecological factors in determining the structure of soil microbial communities. Recent evidence suggests that 'everything is not everywhere', and that microbial communities are influenced by both dispersal limitation and ecological factors. However, we still do not understand the relative explanatory power of spatia...

The release of antibiotics (AB) into the environment poses several threats for human health due to potential development of AB-resistant natural bacteria. Even though the use of low-dose antibiotics has been promoted in health care and farming, significant amounts of AB are observed in aquatic environments. Knowledge on the impact of AB on natural bacterial communities is missing both in terms ...

Dryland ecosystems cover more than 30% of the terrestrial area of China, while processes that shape the biogeographic patterns of bacterial and fungal β-diversity have rarely been evaluated synchronously. To compare the biogeographic patterns and its drivers of bacterial and fungal β-diversity, we collected 62 soil samples from a typical dryland region of northwest China. We assessed bacterial ...

Biofilm communities are exposed to long periods of desiccation in temporary streams. We investigated how water flow intermittency affected the bacterial community structure colonizing three different streambed compartments in a Mediterranean stream. Massive parallel sequencing revealed different bacterial communities in biofilms from sand sediments and cobbles. Bacterial communities were simila...