Transitivity and intransitivity in soil bacterial networks.

ABSTRACT: Competition can lead to the exclusion of bacterial taxa when there is a transitive relationship among competitors with a hierarchy of competitive success. However, competition may not prevent bacterial coexistence if competitors form intransitive loops, in which none is able to outcompete all the rest. Both transitive and intransitive competition have been demonstrated in bacterial model systems. However, in natural soil microbial assemblages competition is typically understood as a dominance relationship leading to the exclusion of weak competitors. Here, we argue that transitive and intransitive interactions concurrently determine the structure of soil microbial communities. We explain why pairwise interactions cannot depict competition correctly in complex communities, and propose an al

SUBMITTER: Verdu M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10689798 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature