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Structured environments foster competitor coexistence by manipulating interspecies interfaces
Natural environments, like soils or the mammalian gut, frequently contain microbial consortia competing within a niche, wherein many species contain genetically encoded mechanisms of interspecies competition. Recent computational work suggests that physical structures in the environment can stabiliz...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7790539/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33412560 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007762 |
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author | Ursell, Tristan |
author_facet | Ursell, Tristan |
author_sort | Ursell, Tristan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Natural environments, like soils or the mammalian gut, frequently contain microbial consortia competing within a niche, wherein many species contain genetically encoded mechanisms of interspecies competition. Recent computational work suggests that physical structures in the environment can stabilize local competition between species that would otherwise be subject to competitive exclusion under isotropic conditions. Here we employ Lotka-Volterra models to show that interfacial competition localizes to physical structures, stabilizing competitive ecological networks of many species, even with significant differences in the strength of competitive interactions between species. Within a limited range of parameter space, we show that for stable communities the length-scale of physical structure inversely correlates with the width of the distribution of competitive fitness, such that physical environments with finer structure can sustain a broader spectrum of interspecific competition. These results highlight the potentially stabilizing effects of physical structure on microbial communities and lay groundwork for engineering structures that stabilize and/or select for diverse communities of ecological, medical, or industrial utility. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7790539 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77905392021-01-27 Structured environments foster competitor coexistence by manipulating interspecies interfaces Ursell, Tristan PLoS Comput Biol Research Article Natural environments, like soils or the mammalian gut, frequently contain microbial consortia competing within a niche, wherein many species contain genetically encoded mechanisms of interspecies competition. Recent computational work suggests that physical structures in the environment can stabilize local competition between species that would otherwise be subject to competitive exclusion under isotropic conditions. Here we employ Lotka-Volterra models to show that interfacial competition localizes to physical structures, stabilizing competitive ecological networks of many species, even with significant differences in the strength of competitive interactions between species. Within a limited range of parameter space, we show that for stable communities the length-scale of physical structure inversely correlates with the width of the distribution of competitive fitness, such that physical environments with finer structure can sustain a broader spectrum of interspecific competition. These results highlight the potentially stabilizing effects of physical structure on microbial communities and lay groundwork for engineering structures that stabilize and/or select for diverse communities of ecological, medical, or industrial utility. Public Library of Science 2021-01-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7790539/ /pubmed/33412560 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007762 Text en © 2021 Tristan Ursell 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 Ursell, Tristan Structured environments foster competitor coexistence by manipulating interspecies interfaces |
title | Structured environments foster competitor coexistence by manipulating interspecies interfaces |
title_full | Structured environments foster competitor coexistence by manipulating interspecies interfaces |
title_fullStr | Structured environments foster competitor coexistence by manipulating interspecies interfaces |
title_full_unstemmed | Structured environments foster competitor coexistence by manipulating interspecies interfaces |
title_short | Structured environments foster competitor coexistence by manipulating interspecies interfaces |
title_sort | structured environments foster competitor coexistence by manipulating interspecies interfaces |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7790539/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33412560 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007762 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT urselltristan structuredenvironmentsfostercompetitorcoexistencebymanipulatinginterspeciesinterfaces |