Biology subjects

Wieczynski, D. J.

Publications and source records attributed to Wieczynski, D. J..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2023

Climate Change Factors Interact to Shift Functional Microbial Composition in Peatlands

Microbes affect the global carbon cycle that influences climate change and are in turn influenced by environmental change. Here, we use data from a long-term whole-ecosystem warming experiment at a boreal peatland to answer how temperature and CO2 jointly influence communities of abundant, diverse, yet poorly understood, non-fungi microbial Eukaryotes (protists). These microbes influence ecosystem function directly through photosynthesis and respiration, and indirectly, through predation on decomposers (bacteria, fungi). Using a combination of high-throughput fluid imaging and 18S amplicon sequencing, we report large climate-induced, community-wide shifts in the community functional composition of these microbes (size, shape, metabolism) that could alter overall function in peatlands. Importantly, we demonstrate a taxonomic convergence but a functional divergence in response to warming and elevated CO2 with most environmental responses being contingent on organismal size: warming effects on functional composition are reversed by elevated CO2 and amplified in larger microbes but not smaller ones. These findings show how the interactive effects of warming and rising CO2 could alter the structure and function of peatland microbial food webs -- a fragile ecosystem that stores 25% of terrestrial carbon and is increasingly threatened by human exploitation.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

Rapid eco-phenotypic feedbacks and the temperature response of biomass dynamics

As biomass dynamics capture information on population dynamics and ecosystem-level processes (e.g., changes in production over time), understanding how rising temperatures associated with global climate change influence biomass dynamics is a pressing issue in ecology. The total biomass of a species depends on its density and its average mass. Disentangling how biomass dynamics may respond to increasingly warm and variable temperatures may thus ultimately depend on understanding how temperature influences both density and mass dynamics. Here, we address this issue by keeping track of experimental microbial populations growing to carrying capacity for 15 days at two different temperatures in the presence and absence of temperature variability. We show that temperature influences biomass through its effects on density and mass dynamics, which have opposite effects on biomass and can offset each other. We also show that temperature variability influences biomass, but that effect is independent of any effects on density or mass dynamics. Last, we show that reciprocal effects of density and mass shift significantly across temperature regimes, suggesting that rapid and environment-dependent eco-phenotypic dynamics underlie biomass responses. Overall, our results connect temperature effects on population and phenotypic dynamics to explain how biomass responds to temperature regimes, thus shedding light on processes at play in cosmopolitan and massively abundant microbes as the world experiences increasingly hot and variable temperatures.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2021

Temperature and nutrients drive complex eco-phenotypic dynamics in a microbial food web

Anthropogenic increases in temperature and nutrient loads will likely impact food web structure and stability. Although their independent effects have been reasonably well studied, their joint effects--particularly on coupled ecological and phenotypic dynamics--remain poorly understood. Here we experimentally manipulated temperature and nutrient levels in microbial food webs and used time-series analysis to quantify the strength of reciprocal effects between ecological and phenotypic dynamics across trophic levels. We found that i) joint -often interactive- effects of temperature and nutrients on ecological dynamics are more common at higher trophic levels, ii) temperature and nutrients interact to shift the relative strength of top-down vs. bottom-up control, and iii) rapid phenotypic change mediates observed ecological responses to changes in temperature and nutrients. Our results uncover how feedbacks between ecological and phenotypic dynamics mediate food web responses to environmental change. This suggests important but previously unknown ways that temperature and nutrients might jointly control the rapid eco-phenotypic feedbacks that determine food web dynamics in a changing world.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2021

Rapid plastic shifts in body size precede and determine population growth

O_LIBody size is a fundamental trait linked to many ecological processes--from individuals to ecosystems. Although the effects of body size on metabolism are well-known, the potential reciprocal effects of body size and density are less clear. Specifically, 1) whether changes in body size or density more strongly influence the other and 2) whether coupled rapid changes in body size and density are due to plasticity, rapid evolutionary change, or a combination of both. C_LIO_LIHere, we address these two issues by experimentally tracking population density and mean body size in the protist Tetrahymena pyriformis as it grows from low density to carrying capacity. We then use Convergent Cross Mapping time series analyses to infer the direction, magnitude, and causality of the link between body size and ecological dynamics. We confirm the results of our analysis by experimentally manipulating body size and density while keeping the other constant. Last, we fit mathematical models to our experimental time series that account for purely plastic change in body size, rapid evolution in size, or a combination of both, to gain insight into the processes that most likely explain the observed dynamics. C_LIO_LIOur results indicate that changes in body size more strongly influence changes in density than the other way around, but also show that there is reciprocity in this effect (i.e., a feedback). We show that a model that only accounts for purely plastic change in size most parsimoniously explains observed, coupled phenotypic and ecological dynamics. C_LIO_LITogether, these results suggest 1) that body size can shift dramatically through plasticity, well within ecological timescales, 2) that rapid changes in body size may have a larger effect on ecological dynamics than the reverse, but 3) phenotypic and ecological dynamics influence each as populations grow. Overall, we show that rapid plastic changes in functional traits like body size may play a fundamental -but currently unrecognized- role in familiar ecological processes such as logistic population growth. C_LI

ecology↗