Serial passage of plant litter decomposing microbial communities

In this study, we examined how microbial community compositions would be affected by repeated passage over multiple "generations". Using microcosms containing plant litter, we inoculated microcosms with 10 distinct soil communities, allowed them to grow for 28 days, then passaged the communities into a new generation of fresh microcosms for a total of 4 additional generations. Communities showed differences in their compositional and functional stability over time, and were explained by various factors including diversity, composition, and nutrients. Understanding how communities respond to repeated passage is important for many microbial engineering approaches.