Abstracts

Julia A. Schwartzman - University of Southern California

Ecological Dynamics of Bacterial Groups

As physically associated groups of cells, microbes are capable of a variety of emergent behaviors, from distributing metabolic functions, to resisting stress and promoting dispersal of offspring. Activities that require such group organization are likely widespread in nature but are also difficult to study in the lab, because of the environmental dependence of group formation. My research team at USC studies the ecological dynamics of bacterial groups, with the goal of understanding the fundamental physical and chemical tradeoffs that constrain their formation. In this talk, I’ll share some of our recent work inspired by marine environments, where we to understand how in the size of bacterial groups shapes physical encounters. I’ll demonstrate that larger groups experience more frequent physical encounters and explore the ecological consequence of this in the context or resource foraging and virus encounter. Together this framework provides a prediction about how physical interactions scaffold and constrains the ecological dynamics of bacterial groups.