Microbial communities as units of selection

23 November 2022

Symposium

• S14 • 14:30 > 16:30 • Microbial communities as units of selection • Room 05
Main organizer (applicant) of the symposium:

Manuel Blouin, Institut Agro, manuel.blouin@agrosupdijon.fr

· Co-organizers of the symposium:

Silvia De Monte, CNRS, MPI Evolutionary Biology, silvia.de.monte@bio.ens.psl.eu

· Session description:

Microbial communities are increasingly considered as units of selection in experiments and models. However, they differ from traditional units of selection such as individual organisms or genes since they do not exhibit the same degree of cohesion and stability, nor possess easily recognizable life cycles. Their ecological dynamics is thus key to understand their evolutionary dynamics. Experiments on natural or artificial selection of microbial communities are increasingly developed. They are guided by applied objectives, like improving the efficiency to perform a given function (e.g. to degrade a pollutant or improve plant growth), and/or by conceptual ones, such as unraveling their ecological and evolutionary dynamics, and defining their status in terms of selection unit. Some models are trying to mimic experiments and identify strategies to improve experimental protocols, others are focused on describing communities as complex systems. What makes microbial communities legitimate units of selection is a key conceptual question that started to be addressed in a small number of recent papers, with a diversity of perspectives, which reveals a cogent need to discuss the advantages and drawbacks of different modeling and experimental approaches.
The objectives of this symposium are to:
- communicate to the international community of ecology and evolution on this emerging field of research
- strengthen the links between ecology and evolution by gathering people from these disciplines and at their interface
- develop a common culture, encompassing theoretical and applied approaches, to promote the dialogue between experiments and models

· Speakers
15 minutes presentation and 5 minutes discussion for each talk. All the speakers confirmed their interest and presence in the colloquium.
Talk 1. BLOUIN Manuel, Institut Agro (manuel.blouin@agrosupdijon.fr ), Artificial selection of microbial communities: when experiments provide theoretical knowledge.
Talk 2. DOULCIER Guilhem, Macquarie University, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (guilhem.doulcier@normalesup.org ), Theoretical and statistical methods for the experimental selection of collectives.
Talk 3. SHOU Wenying, University College of London (w.shou@ucl.ac.uk), Optimizing the protocol of microbial community artificial selection thanks to models.
Talk 4. DE MONTE Silvia, CNRS, Max Plank Institute Evolutionary Biology (silvia.de.monte@bio.ens.psl.eu), Modelling the feedbacks between community selection and community ecology.
Talk 5. COLLET Pierre, University of Strasbourg (Pierre.Collet@unistra.fr ), Evolutionary algorithms.

• INT12 • Artificial selection of microbial communities: when experiments provide theoretical knowledge > M. Manuel BLOUIN
Content : BLOUIN Manuel, Institut Agro (manuel.blouin@agrosupdijon.fr) • INT127 • Theoretical and statistical methods for the experimental selection of collectives > G. Guilhem DOULCIER
Content : DOULCIER Guilhem, Macquarie University, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (guilhem.doulcier@normalesup.org) • INT128 • Optimizing the protocol of microbial community artificial selection thanks to models > W. Wenying SHOU
Content : SHOU Wenying, University College of London (w.shou@ucl.ac.uk) • INT129 • Modelling the feedbacks between community selection and community ecology > S. Silvia DE MONTE
Content : DE MONTE Silvia, CNRS, Max Plank Institute Evolutionary Biology (silvia.de.monte@bio.ens.psl.eu) • INT130 • Evolutionary algorithms
Content : COLLET Pierre, University of Strasbourg (Pierre.Collet@unistra.fr)