Cargando…

Available energy fluxes drive a transition in the diversity, stability, and functional structure of microbial communities

A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences between the microbes and their chemical environment through the...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Marsland, Robert, Cui, Wenping, Goldford, Joshua, Sanchez, Alvaro, Korolev, Kirill, Mehta, Pankaj
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6386421/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30721227
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006793
_version_ 1783397382773276672
author Marsland, Robert
Cui, Wenping
Goldford, Joshua
Sanchez, Alvaro
Korolev, Kirill
Mehta, Pankaj
author_facet Marsland, Robert
Cui, Wenping
Goldford, Joshua
Sanchez, Alvaro
Korolev, Kirill
Mehta, Pankaj
author_sort Marsland, Robert
collection PubMed
description A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences between the microbes and their chemical environment through the consumption and production of metabolites. By analyzing a generalized consumer resource model that explicitly includes cross-feeding, stochastic colonization, and thermodynamics, we show that complex microbial communities generically exhibit a transition as a function of available energy fluxes from a “resource-limited” regime where community structure and stability is shaped by energetic and metabolic considerations to a diverse regime where the dominant force shaping microbial communities is the overlap between species’ consumption preferences. These two regimes have distinct species abundance patterns, different functional profiles, and respond differently to environmental perturbations. Our model reproduces large-scale ecological patterns observed across multiple experimental settings such as nestedness and differential beta diversity patterns along energy gradients. We discuss the experimental implications of our results and possible connections with disorder-induced phase transitions in statistical physics.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6386421
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-63864212019-03-08 Available energy fluxes drive a transition in the diversity, stability, and functional structure of microbial communities Marsland, Robert Cui, Wenping Goldford, Joshua Sanchez, Alvaro Korolev, Kirill Mehta, Pankaj PLoS Comput Biol Research Article A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences between the microbes and their chemical environment through the consumption and production of metabolites. By analyzing a generalized consumer resource model that explicitly includes cross-feeding, stochastic colonization, and thermodynamics, we show that complex microbial communities generically exhibit a transition as a function of available energy fluxes from a “resource-limited” regime where community structure and stability is shaped by energetic and metabolic considerations to a diverse regime where the dominant force shaping microbial communities is the overlap between species’ consumption preferences. These two regimes have distinct species abundance patterns, different functional profiles, and respond differently to environmental perturbations. Our model reproduces large-scale ecological patterns observed across multiple experimental settings such as nestedness and differential beta diversity patterns along energy gradients. We discuss the experimental implications of our results and possible connections with disorder-induced phase transitions in statistical physics. Public Library of Science 2019-02-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6386421/ /pubmed/30721227 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006793 Text en © 2019 Marsland et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Marsland, Robert
Cui, Wenping
Goldford, Joshua
Sanchez, Alvaro
Korolev, Kirill
Mehta, Pankaj
Available energy fluxes drive a transition in the diversity, stability, and functional structure of microbial communities
title Available energy fluxes drive a transition in the diversity, stability, and functional structure of microbial communities
title_full Available energy fluxes drive a transition in the diversity, stability, and functional structure of microbial communities
title_fullStr Available energy fluxes drive a transition in the diversity, stability, and functional structure of microbial communities
title_full_unstemmed Available energy fluxes drive a transition in the diversity, stability, and functional structure of microbial communities
title_short Available energy fluxes drive a transition in the diversity, stability, and functional structure of microbial communities
title_sort available energy fluxes drive a transition in the diversity, stability, and functional structure of microbial communities
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6386421/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30721227
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006793
work_keys_str_mv AT marslandrobert availableenergyfluxesdriveatransitioninthediversitystabilityandfunctionalstructureofmicrobialcommunities
AT cuiwenping availableenergyfluxesdriveatransitioninthediversitystabilityandfunctionalstructureofmicrobialcommunities
AT goldfordjoshua availableenergyfluxesdriveatransitioninthediversitystabilityandfunctionalstructureofmicrobialcommunities
AT sanchezalvaro availableenergyfluxesdriveatransitioninthediversitystabilityandfunctionalstructureofmicrobialcommunities
AT korolevkirill availableenergyfluxesdriveatransitioninthediversitystabilityandfunctionalstructureofmicrobialcommunities
AT mehtapankaj availableenergyfluxesdriveatransitioninthediversitystabilityandfunctionalstructureofmicrobialcommunities