Rain Franco et al 2021 Molecular Ecology. Niche breadth affects bacterial transcription patterns along a salinity gradient.

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OTHER TOPICS: Aesthetics of Biodiversity, Biogeography, Macroecology & Ecophylogenetics, Experimental Evolution, Functional Biogeography, Functional Rarity, Nature for Future, Metacommunities, Metaecosystems, Reviews and Synthesis, Trophic Biogeography & Metaweb

THE ECOLOGICAL CAUSES OF FUNCTIONAL DISTINCTIVENESS IN COMMUNITIES.

A Rain Franco, N, Mouquet C Gougat Barbera, T Bouvier, S Beier (2021).

Molecular ecology doi:10.1111/mec.16316

Key message : The main objective of this study was to identify general transcriptional patterns that would distinguish bacterial strains characterized by contrasted niche breath (NB) along a salinity gradient. We hypothesized that genes encoding fitness-related traits have a higher degree of transcriptional regulation in specialists than in generalists. By contrast, we expected that generalists would exhibit enhanced transcriptional regulation of genes encoding traits that protect them against cellular damage. The results suggested that transcriptional regulation levels of fitness- and adaptation-related genes correlated with the NB and/or the stress exposure of the inspected strains. We further identified a shortlist of candidate stress marker genes that could be used in future studies to monitor the susceptibility of bacterial populations or communities to environmental changes.

Modelled fitness for the 11 strains used in this study. (a– k) Fitted fitness curves and the sampled salinity levels (dashed black lines, from left to right S1 , S2 , S 3 in each panel) to estimate the transcriptional response to changing salinity relative to the fitness curves. The vertical black line indicates the optimal fitness of each strain.