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Most natural environments are characterized by frequent changes of their abiotic conditions. Microorganisms can respond to such changes by switching their physiological state between activity and dormancy allowing them to endure periods of unfavorable abiotic conditions. As a consequence, the competitiveness of microbial species is not simply determined by their growth performance under favorable conditions but also by their ability and readiness to respond to periods of unfavorable environmental conditions. The present study investigates the relevance of factors controlling the abundance and activity of individual bacterial species competing for an intermittently supplied substrate. For this purpose, numerical experiments were performed addressing the response of microbial systems to regularly applied feeding pulses. Simulation results show that community dynamics may exhibit a non-trivial link to the frequency of the external constraints and that for a certain combination of these environmental conditions coexistence of species is possible. The ecological implication of our results is that even non-dominant, neglected species can have a strong influence on realized species composition of dominant key species, due to their invisible presence enable the coexistence between important key species and by this affecting provided function of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biogeochemical activity in natural and engineered systems depends on the abundances, functional capabilities and physiological states of the indigenous microorganisms. Typically, only a fraction of the microbial population is active at any given time. As environmental conditions change, previously active microorganisms may switch to an inactive or dormant state, while dormant ones may become active. Here, we present an extended modeling concept for the growth and decay of microorganisms that explicitly accounts for their ability to switch between active and dormant states. The equations describing the switching between physiological states are implemented into a biogeochemical reaction simulator. The model was used to reproduce published data from two laboratory experiments in which microorganisms were subjected to intermittent substrate supply or reactivated after a prolonged period of starvation. Parameter values obtained from the simulation of these experiments were used for subsequent sensitivity analyses and for the simulation of hypothetical scenarios. Results for hypothetical microbial communities consisting of two competing species exposed to periodic feeding imply that, under certain conditions, an effective dormancy-reactivation strategy may have a competitive advantage over a fast growth strategy. That is, organisms that can switch rapidly in response to fluctuations in external conditions may outcompete fast-growing organisms. Furthermore, certain combinations of growth and dormancy strategies may lead to the long-term coexistence of the two competing species. Overall, the simulated population dynamics show that dormancy is an important feature of microbial communities, which can lead to complex responses to environmental fluctuations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]