Dynamics of Bacterial Communities in Artificial Soils

Soil microbial communities are central to biogeochemical processes, yet the impact of spatial heterogeneity on their organization and stability remains poorly understood. We investigate how soil architecture shapes the dynamics of soil bacteria using optically transparent artificial soils that enable direct visualization of their spatiotemporal distributions, from the scale of communities to single cells, via confocal microscopy. By tuning the pore-size distribution, we examine how spatial structure influences bacterial transport and interactions, and we investigate how the interplay of these factors affects community assembly and stability. Our work thus integrates controlled physical environments with live-cell imaging to provide insight toward a mechanistic understanding of how microscale geometry controls the dynamics of microbial ecosystems.