Ecology and evolution of microbial community assembly

Summary

This thesis research used a traditionally fermented milk beverage from Zambia and wine yeast communities as model systems to investigate three processes of community assembly - timescale, diversity, and invasion. It also conceptualised how communities can respond to an altered environment both via ecological and evolutionary processes, that is, by adjustment of relative species abundances (species sorting) and by spontaneous mutations spreading in individual species. A core inspiration for this thesis was to perform experimental evolution styled propagation experiments using microbial communities of multiple species, while considering species in a community in a paralleled view to genetic variants within a single species. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the suitability of microbial communities of fermented foods as model experimental systems to investigate community composition-function relationships. Furthermore, all chapters can be linked to real world applications of fermented foods, namely food spoilage and the role of community composition for aromatic properties.