Simulations reveal challenges to artificial community selection and possible strategies for success.

ABSTRACT: Multispecies microbial communities often display "community functions" arising from interactions of member species. Interactions are often difficult to decipher, making it challenging to design communities with desired functions. Alternatively, similar to artificial selection for individuals in agriculture and industry, one could repeatedly choose communities with the highest community functions to reproduce by randomly partitioning each into multiple "Newborn" communities for the next cycle. However, previous efforts in selecting complex communities have generated mixed outcomes that are difficult to interpret. To understand how to effectively enact community selection, we simulated community selection to improve a community function that requires 2 species and imposes a fitness cost on o

SUBMITTER: Xie L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6658139 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature