Disturbance History Shapes Microbial Community Assembly and Predictability in a Continuous Culture System.

Repeated minor salinity pulses and recovery intervals significantly influence microbial community responses, with divergence increasing over time and affecting stability and assembly processes.

• Why it matters: Understanding how disturbance history impacts microbial community assembly is crucial for predicting ecosystem responses to environmental fluctuations, yet this relationship remains poorly characterized.
• What they did: A controlled continuous culture experiment with 26 sampling points over 50 days tested two disturbance histories of salinity pulses and their effects on bacterial communities, focusing on responses to a major salinity pulse.
• The result: Disturbance history altered richness changes and maintained higher stochasticity after the major pulse, highlighting that sequence and timing of disturbances shape microbial stability and assembly predictability.