Abstract
Microbial ecosystems are remarkably diverse, stable, and usually consist of a mixture of core and peripheral species. Here we propose a conceptual model exhibiting all these emergent properties in quantitative agreement with real ecosystem data, specifically species abundance and prevalence distributions. Resource competition and metabolic commensalism drive the stochastic ecosystem assembly in our model. We demonstrate that even when supplied with just one resource, ecosystems can exhibit high diversity, increasing stability, and partial reproducibility between samples.
- Received 3 November 2017
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.158102
© 2018 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Focus
How 1000 Bacterial Species Can Coexist
Published 13 April 2018
The surprising stability of large and diverse bacterial communities can be explained by a model that emphasizes the microbes’ food requirements.
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