Modelling structure and dynamics of microbial community in aquatic ecosystems: The importance of hydrodynamic processes

• Computational models can capture microbial dynamics in different ecosystems. • Hydrodynamic processes are vital for applying microbial models to aquatic ecosystems. • Ecological models focus on associations of multiple members in the community. • Metabolic models aim to simulate dynamic processes of functional species. Microbial communities are essential roles in aquatic ecosystems, which participate in a number of biogeochemical processes, and are vital for the protection and ecological remediation of water environment. Mathematical models have been demonstrated to be highly advantageous for investigating the composition, functions and metabolic behaviors of microbial community. Moreover, advances in molecular biology tools have provided sufficient information for numerical simulation of microbial community structure and dynamics, which contribute to the rapid developments of microbial modelling approaches. However, models focusing only on the metabolic processes of microbial community exist nonnegligible drawbacks when applying in aquatic ecosystems. They are not capable to simulate the hydrodynamic processes in flowing water, which would significantly change the composition and functions of microbial community. Thus, incorporating hydrodynamic processes into microbial models are vital for the in-depth investigation of aquatic microbial community. In this review, latest developments on microbial modelling approaches have been summarized to demonstrate how different approaches have been adapted to highly dynamic context to unravel the characteristics of microbial community in the aquatic ecosystems. Furthermore, present limitations of different modelling strategies have been discussed and several future development directions have been provided to make the simulation of microbial community in aquatic ecosystem to greater depth and accuracy.