Fine-scale diversity of microbial communities due to satellite niches in boom and bust environments
Name
journal.pcbi.1010244.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.51 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
be2b4414a35dc5f4dc9558d23c1c9ffa
Author(s)
Fridman, Yulia
Wang, Zihan
Maslov, Sergei
Goyal, Akshit
Date Issued
December 27, 2022
Journal
PLOS Computational Biology
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Citation
Fridman, Yulia, Wang, Zihan, Maslov, Sergei and Goyal, Akshit. 2022. "Fine-scale diversity of microbial communities due to satellite niches in boom and bust environments." PLOS Computational Biology, 18 (12).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Recent observations have revealed that closely related strains of the same microbial species can stably coexist in natural and laboratory settings subject to boom and bust dynamics and serial dilutions, respectively. However, the possible mechanisms enabling the coexistence of only a handful of strains, but not more, have thus far remained unknown. Here, using a consumer-resource model of microbial ecosystems, we propose that by differentiating along Monod parameters characterizing microbial growth rates in high and low nutrient conditions, strains can coexist in patterns similar to those observed. In our model, boom and bust environments create satellite niches due to resource concentrations varying in time. These satellite niches can be occupied by closely related strains, thereby enabling their coexistence. We demonstrate that this result is valid even in complex environments consisting of multiple resources and species. In these complex communities, each species partitions resources differently and creates separate sets of satellite niches for their own strains. While there is no theoretical limit to the number of coexisting strains, in our simulations, we always find between 1 and 3 strains coexisting, consistent with known experiments and observations.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010244
