Manipulating disturbance synchrony to regulate microbial systems (2025-2027)
Abstract
From agricultural soils to the mammalian gut, bacterial communities are often exposed to mixtures of antimicrobials and viruses called bacteriophages. Despite fluctuations in these stressors in natural and managed ecosystems, it remains unclear how the temporal synchrony of phages and antimicrobials mediates microbial community dynamics and the evolution of resistance. By combining emerging ecological theory and high-throughput experiments this project aims to uncover the effect of antibiotic-phage synchrony on microbial ecology and evolution. The knowledge produced by the project is expected to provide significant benefits for the manipulation of microbial systems and for the management of fluctuating stressors in ecosystems.
