Overview

Research on microbial communities presents fundamental questions about how microbes come
together and co-exist in Nature and what “community-level” functions they display. This
workshop will explore these open questions in the context of energetics and spatio-temporal
dynamics.
 
As dynamic ecosystems, microbial communities exhibit energy and material fluxes and adhere
to thermodynamic laws. The quantitative measurement of these fluxes and their evaluation in a
thermodynamically correct manner has been lacking. The application of concepts from
nonlinear, nonequilibrium thermodynamics to communities is still largely unexplored, and their
relevance to understanding community dynamics remains unknown. 

Interlinked with this energetic view of microbial communities is the fact that microbial
communities are temporally dynamic and almost always spatially structured. This gives rise to
spatiotemporal dynamics in both species (consumers) and chemical (resources, metabolites)
abundances, which are rarely quantified or modelled. 
 
This one-week workshop aims to develop an integrated theoretical and experimental framework
that accounts for the energetics of microbial communities and their spatiotemporal dynamics. 
The key areas of discussion will be centered around:
 

• Energy balances and quantitative measurement of metabolic fluxes in microbial communities

• Thermodynamic and physiological constraints at the community and species levels

• Spatial and temporal dynamics of species and metabolites

 
In each area, we will examine the experimental challenges and explore possible theoretical
approaches that can be applied. On the experimental side, we are particularly interested in
exploring model systems and under-represented measurement approaches, such as calorimetry
and spatially resolved methods. These approaches are needed to understand how energy
fluxes operate at the community-level, as well as how they vary in space and time.