2019/06/29 by Veronika Dubinkina, Yulia Fridman, Dubinkina, Veronika +5 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT) #Dynamical Systems (math.DS) #Ecosystem dynamics and resilience #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1907.01380
openalex publication_date 2019/06/29 · openalex created_date 2022/07/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Microbial communities routinely have several possible species compositions or\ncommunity states observed for the same environmental parameters. Changes in\nthese parameters can trigger abrupt and persistent transitions (regime shifts)\nbetween such community states. Yet little is known about the main determinants\nand mechanisms of multistability in microbial communities. Here we introduce\nand study a resource-explicit model in which microbes compete for two types of\nessential nutrients. We adapt game-theoretical methods of the stable matching\nproblem to identify all possible species compositions of a microbial community.\nWe then classify them by their resilience against three types of perturbations:\nfluctuations in nutrient supply, invasions by new species, and small changes of\nabundances of existing ones. We observe multistability and explore an intricate\nnetwork of regime shifts between stable states in our model. Our results\nsuggest that multistability requires microbial species to have different\nstoichiometries of essential nutrients. We also find that balanced nutrient\nsupply promote multistability and species diversity yet make individual\ncommunity states less stable.\n