Methanotrophs in stratified lakes

Context

Methane oxidation is an important process for the regulation of methane emissions from lakes.
The MOBtrait project combines microbial ecology, physiology, and modeling in an interdisciplinary effort to achieve fundamental progress in our understanding of the ecology of aerobic methane oxidizing bacteria in freshwater systems and towards predicting system development under dynamically changing conditions.

Aims

We will study in detail the distribution of different subpopulations of methanotrophic bacteria in different stratified lakes. Through a combination of observational studies, and isolation and characterization of freshwater methanotrophs from the lakes, we will gather information about the physiological and ecological characteristics of these populations. In the laboratory we will determine the decisive factors for niche separation in competition experiments.

Approaches

These experiments and field data will be used to develop and interactively improve a model for methane oxidation in lakes that explicitly takes microbial populations and their trait distributions into account. We will assess if such a population-explicit model can provide a better model for methane dynamics in lakes, especially for temporally dynamic systems.

Collaboration

interdisciplinary project team

external page Dr. Helmut Bürgmann Tel. +41 58 765 2165

external page Magdalena Mayr Doctoral Student Tel. +41 58 765 2142

external page Matthias Zimmermann Doctoral Student Tel. +41 58 765 2257

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Wehrli Tel. +41 58 765 2117

collaboration with researchers from Eawag and ETH Zurich

Carsten Schubert, Martin Schmid (Eawag)

Martin Schroth, Ruth Henneberger (ETH Zurich)

Funding

Swiss National Science Foundation (external page SNSF)