Abstract

Predicting how bacterial community structure impacts ecosystem functioning requires quantifying how bacteria interact in natural environments. Our past research has used synthetic communities to characterise the ecology and evolution of bacterial interactions. Results indicate that: (i) interactions tend to be antagonistic, (ii) community complexity mollifies antagonisms and favours positive interactions, (iii) interactions evolve rapidly with repercussions for ecosystem functioning, and (iv) higher-order interactions are relatively unimportant. However, extrapolating these results to natural environments is challenging because of the complexity these communities. I will discuss one potential solution, which uses common garden experiments to quantify interactions in complex communities collected from nature.