Publications by authors named "Janneke Noorlag"
Background: During range expansion in spatially distributed habitats, organisms differ from one another in terms of their patterns of localization versus propagation. To exploit locations or explore the landscape? This is the competition-colonization trade-off, a dichotomy at the core of ecological succession. In bacterial communities, this trade-off is a fundamental mechanism towards understanding spatio-temporal fluxes in microbiome composition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding mechanisms shaping distributions and interactions of soil microbes is essential for determining their impact on large scale ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, climate regulation, waste decomposition, and nutrient cycling. As the functional unit of soil ecosystems, we focus our attention on the spatial structure of soil macroaggregates. Emulating this complex physico-chemical environment as a patchy habitat landscape we investigate the effect of changing the connectivity features of this landscape as forms a metapopulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study investigated how spatial and temporal structures in habitats influence the evolution of antibiotic resistance using a microfluidic device to create ciprofloxacin gradients.
- Researchers found that bacteria formed biofilms in areas with low antibiotic concentrations, allowing them to compete locally and migrate less, which helped amplify selection for beneficial mutations.
- The physical environment induced stress-related mutations advantageous when exposed to antibiotics, suggesting that these processes contribute to the emergence of highly resistant bacterial mutations.