Microbial Syntrophy Drives Methanogenesis From Residual Hydrocarbons in Anaerobic Oil Sands Tailings.

Abundance-informed Shapley analysis of two naphtha-amended anaerobic oil sands tailings incubations links methane production to bacterial–archaeal coalitions, with phase-dependent interaction patterns.

• Why it matters: Methane can persist for decades in these tailings, but the microbial interaction mechanisms connecting hydrocarbon turnover to methanogenesis are not well resolved.
• What they did: The study analyzed 16S rRNA gene relative abundance, hydrocarbon consumption, and methane production using a cooperative game-theoretical Shapley framework, then tested sensitivity and stochastic forecasting.
• The result: Shapley-derived reaction intensities improve predictive performance over reduced microbial and non-microbial benchmarks, and inferred syntrophic partnerships shift across incubation phases.

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