Nitrogen-fixer enhances lipid yields in algal polycultures

Current algal biomass research still focuses mainly on identifying and growing monocultures that produce high amounts of lipids or other target compounds. However, monocultures might have a lower efficiency of utilizing resources, due to their limited physiological resource use possibilities, compared to algal polycultures. Recent studies showed that species diversity enhances the lipid production of microalgae. To identify the general patterns of enhanced lipid production in diverse microalgal communities it is essential to investigate links between resource use complementarity and the corresponding lipid production.