- Microbes need many different resources, but do some of these resources simultaneously COLIMIT growth? @proteocean.bsky.social and I provide a new review of this concept, a summary of evidence that colimitation occurs in natural environments, and its causes/consequences. doi.org/10.32942/X2S... 1/6Mar 5, 2024 04:52
- The number of papers on colimitation has increased rapidly in recent years, but the literature can be confusing because there are many surrounding concepts and terms, some of which are not well defined. We carefully review the key concepts here, especially biological scale and growth traits. 2/6
- In a meta-analysis of 71 published studies from across microbial habitats, we find that 55% claim evidence of colimitation, and this detection rate has been increasing over time. This suggests that colimitation may be relatively common in nature, especially as we look for it more often. 3/6
- What causes colimitation? In general it requires the alignment of resource consumption with the environment, but there are lots of potential sub-factors including interactions between resources, spatial and temporal heterogeneity, and evolution. 4/6
- Why should we care if microbes are colimited? It is clearly important for predicting and controlling microbial growth, but there are also intriguing hypotheses about how it affects cell physiology, ecology, and even the cycling of elements through Earth's ecosystems. 5/6
- We argue the big challenges for the future are 1) to figure out how colimitation works at the molecular/cellular scale, 2) more systematic scans of microbial growth across resource conditions, and 3) models to better predict what colimitation means for ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles. 6/6
