A minimal model for microbial biodiversity can reproduce experimentally observed ecological patterns.

ABSTRACT: Surveys of microbial biodiversity such as the Earth Microbiome Project (EMP) and the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) have revealed robust ecological patterns across different environments. A major goal in ecology is to leverage these patterns to identify the ecological processes shaping microbial ecosystems. One promising approach is to use minimal models that can relate mechanistic assumptions at the microbe scale to community-level patterns. Here, we demonstrate the utility of this approach by showing that the Microbial Consumer Resource Model (MiCRM) - a minimal model for microbial communities with resource competition, metabolic crossfeeding and stochastic colonization - can qualitatively reproduce patterns found in survey data including compositional gradients, dissimilarity/overlap co

SUBMITTER: Marsland R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7039880 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature