Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-2016

DOI

10.1098/rsbl.2016.0070

Publication Title

Biology Letters

Volume

12

Issue

4

Pages

5 pages

Abstract

Microbial populations can be dispersal limited. However, microorganisms that successfully disperse into physiologically ideal environments are not guaranteed to establish. This observation contradicts the Baas-Becking tenet: ‘Everything is everywhere, but the environment selects’. Allee effects, which manifest in the relationship between initial population density and probability of establishment, could explain this observation. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that small populations of Vibrio fischeri are subject to an intrinsic demographic Allee effect. Populations subjected to predationby the bacterivore Cafeteria roenbergensis display both intrinsic and extrinsic demographic Allee effects. The estimated critical threshold required to escape positive densitydependence is around 5, 20 or 90 cells ml-1 under conditions of high carbon resources, low carbon resources or low carbon resources with predation, respectively. Thiswork builds on the foundations ofmodern microbial ecology, demonstrating that mechanisms controlling macroorganisms apply to microorganisms, and provides a statistical method to detect Allee effects in data.

Rights

Web of Science: "Free full-text from publisher."

© 2016 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Data Availability

Article states: "The dataset and analysis have been deposited in the Dryad Digital Repository (http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q7qv2)."

Original Publication Citation

Kaul, R. B., Kramer, A. M., Dobbs, F. C., & Drake, J. M. (2016). Experimental demonstration of an allee effect in microbial populations. Biology Letters, 12(4). doi:10.1098/rsbl.2016.0070

ORCID

/0000-0002-3901-179X (Dobbs)

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