Top-down identification of keystone taxa in the microbiome.

ABSTRACT: Keystone taxa in ecological communities are native taxa that play an especially important role in the stability of their ecosystem. However, we still lack an effective framework for identifying these taxa from the available high-throughput sequencing without the notoriously difficult step of reconstructing the detailed network of inter-specific interactions. In addition, while most microbial interaction models assume pair-wise relationships, it is yet unclear whether pair-wise interactions dominate the system, or whether higher-order interactions are relevant. Here we propose a top-down identification framework, which detects keystones by their total influence on the rest of the taxa. Our method does not assume a priori knowledge of pairwise interactions or any specific underlying dynamics

SUBMITTER: Amit G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10319726 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature