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Sterilization of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is an essential step in research on interactions between DOC and organisms, for example where the effect of different microbial communities on DOC is studied or vice versa. However, few studies have gone beyond acknowledging that sterilization of DOC influences its characteristics. Here, we aimed to provide further knowledge that enables scientists to better tailor their sterilization methods to their research question. To meet this aim, we conducted a sterilization experiment with DOC from 4 boreal lakes treated with 4 sterilization methods, i.e. 2 filtrations (0.2 µm, 0.1 µm) and 2 autoclaving approaches (single and double autoclaving with a single pH adjustment). Quantity and spectroscopic properties of DOC, before and after sterilization, were studied, and DOC was further tested as a substrate for bacterial growth. We found that the filtration methods better preserved the different DOC measures. In contrast, autoclaving caused major inconsistent shifts in both qualitative and quantitative measures of DOC, as well as an increase of the maximum abundance of bacteria in growth experiments. Nonetheless, there remains a trade-off between retaining the quality of DOC and achieving sterile conditions. Therefore, the sterilization method of choice should be guided by the scientific question at hand., Title in Thesis list of papers: Effects of sterilization on composition and bacterial utilization of dissolved organic carbon

The importance of biodiversity has been of primary interest for ecologist the last 20 years, giving rise to biodiversity ecosystem function (BEF) studies. Within the traditional field of ecology reoccurring patterns have emerged but within microbial ecology the importance of species richness for functioning is still poorly understood with few consistent patterns. In this study we examined the effect of species richness for dissolved organic matter degradation in lakes. This was examined within a smaller span of species richness compared to what is typically in microbial BEF experiments. Bacterial communities of reduced species richness were exposed to a range of DOC environments to test if reduced richness changed the functioning of communities and if the effect was similar among DOC environments. This was conducted in a full factorial design of 3 levels, with 6 dilutions, 5 media and 3 inocula resulting in 90 treatments. Overall, richness and community composition appeared to have effects on DOC degradation, but these effects were minor compared to the variation caused by the different DOC sources. Further, the importance of species richness varied among media and, thus, the chemical complexity of the environment influenced the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship.

The interaction between bacteria and dissolved organic matter (DOM) is crucial for the global carbon cycling. Despite decades of research there are, however, few consistent patterns regarding the relationship between bacterial diversity and community composition and DOM. Here we hypothesized that one reason for such inconsistences among studies is that bacterial communities can adapt to a DOM source over time, whereby a change in the functioning of a community can be, at least partly, decoupled from its composition and diversity. To test this idea we performed a reciprocal transplant experiment with medium (i.e. DOM source) and bacterial communities from two boreal lakes. In this experiment the two communities were allowed to adapt to their indigenous and their foreign source of DOM over 42 days. Bacterial community composition (BCC) was measured throughout the experiment. In addition we measured the capacity of the communities to use DOM, in repeated short (5 days) separated bioassays. The results show a response of bacterial community composition to the DOM sources which was influenced by the origin of the community. In contrast, we could not show an effect of BCC on DOM-processing and functional performance. Indeed, communities of different origin processed the two DOM sources equally well even at the beginning of the experiment. This work demonstrates that the DOM pool can be a strong selective force for BCC but not vice versa.