Prediction of competitive microbial growth in mixed culture at dynamic temperature patterns.

A novel competition model developed with the new logistic model and the Lotka-Volterra model successfully predicted the growth of bacteria in mixed culture using the mesophiles Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Salmonella at a constant temperature in our previous studies. In this study, we further studied the prediction of the growth of those bacteria in mixed culture at dynamic temperatures with various initial populations with the competition model. First, we studied the growth kinetics of the species in a monoculture at various constant temperatures ranging from 16℃ to 32℃. With the analyzed data in the monoculture, we then examined the prediction of bacterial growth in mixed culture with two and three species. The growth of the bacteria in the mixed culture at dynamic temperatures was successfully predicted with the model. The residuals between the observed and predicted populations at the data points were <0.5 log at most points, being 83.3% and 84.2% for the two-species mixture and the three-species mixture, respectively. The present study showed that the model could be applied to the competitive growth in mixed culture at dynamic temperature patterns.