Linking nutrient availability and community size to stochasticity in microbial community assembly.

ABSTRACT: Both deterministic (e.g. species-environment interactions) and stochastic processes (e.g. random birth and death events) shape communities, but it remains poorly understood, which environmental conditions promote stochasticity. Here, we investigated interactive effects of nutrient availability and community size on stochasticity in order to predict how eutrophication and biomass loss shift the balance between predictable and random community dynamics. For this, we used freshwater bacterial communities in a microcosm experiment, where communities were diluted to varying sizes and exposed to low, intermediate, and high nutrient concentrations. Stochasticity was estimated with null modelling and as beta-diversity among replicate communities. At low nutrient concentrations, deterministic proce

SUBMITTER: Bick B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12603558 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature