Community structure follows simple assembly rules in microbial microcosms
Microorganisms typically form diverse communities of interacting species, whose activities have tremendous impact on the plants, animals and humans they associate with. The ability to predict the structure of these complex communities is crucial to understanding and managing them. Here, we propose a...
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| Format: | Article |
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Springer Science and Business Media LLC
2019
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123084 |
| _version_ | 1826215659890016256 |
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| author | Friedman, Jonathan Higgins, Logan M. Gore, Jeff |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Microbiology Graduate Program |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Microbiology Graduate Program Friedman, Jonathan Higgins, Logan M. Gore, Jeff |
| author_sort | Friedman, Jonathan |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Microorganisms typically form diverse communities of interacting species, whose activities have tremendous impact on the plants, animals and humans they associate with. The ability to predict the structure of these complex communities is crucial to understanding and managing them. Here, we propose a simple, qualitative assembly rule that predicts community structure from the outcomes of competitions between small sets of species, and experimentally assess its predictive power using synthetic microbial communities composed of up to eight soil bacterial species. Nearly all competitions resulted in a unique, stable community, whose composition was independent of the initial species fractions. Survival in three-species competitions was predicted by the pairwise outcomes with an accuracy of ~90%. Obtaining a similar level of accuracy in competitions between sets of seven or all eight species required incorporating additional information regarding the outcomes of the three-species competitions. Our results demonstrate experimentally the ability of a simple bottom-up approach to predict community structure. Such an approach is key for anticipating the response of communities to changing environments, designing interventions to steer existing communities to more desirable states and, ultimately, rationally designing communities de novo. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:37:26Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/123084 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:37:26Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1230842022-09-29T20:24:21Z Community structure follows simple assembly rules in microbial microcosms Friedman, Jonathan Higgins, Logan M. Gore, Jeff Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Microbiology Graduate Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics Microorganisms typically form diverse communities of interacting species, whose activities have tremendous impact on the plants, animals and humans they associate with. The ability to predict the structure of these complex communities is crucial to understanding and managing them. Here, we propose a simple, qualitative assembly rule that predicts community structure from the outcomes of competitions between small sets of species, and experimentally assess its predictive power using synthetic microbial communities composed of up to eight soil bacterial species. Nearly all competitions resulted in a unique, stable community, whose composition was independent of the initial species fractions. Survival in three-species competitions was predicted by the pairwise outcomes with an accuracy of ~90%. Obtaining a similar level of accuracy in competitions between sets of seven or all eight species required incorporating additional information regarding the outcomes of the three-species competitions. Our results demonstrate experimentally the ability of a simple bottom-up approach to predict community structure. Such an approach is key for anticipating the response of communities to changing environments, designing interventions to steer existing communities to more desirable states and, ultimately, rationally designing communities de novo. United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (New Innovator Award NIH DP2) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CAREER Award) Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group (Allen Investigator Program) Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Sloan Research Fellowship) Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew Scholars Program) 2019-11-25T19:07:00Z 2019-11-25T19:07:00Z 2017-03 2016-08 2019-03-25T16:36:32Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2397-334X https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123084 Friedman, Jonathan, et al. “Community Structure Follows Simple Assembly Rules in Microbial Microcosms.” Nature Ecology & Evolution 1, 5 (March 2017): 0109 © 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0109 Nature Ecology & Evolution Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Springer Science and Business Media LLC bioRxiv |
| spellingShingle | Friedman, Jonathan Higgins, Logan M. Gore, Jeff Community structure follows simple assembly rules in microbial microcosms |
| title | Community structure follows simple assembly rules in microbial microcosms |
| title_full | Community structure follows simple assembly rules in microbial microcosms |
| title_fullStr | Community structure follows simple assembly rules in microbial microcosms |
| title_full_unstemmed | Community structure follows simple assembly rules in microbial microcosms |
| title_short | Community structure follows simple assembly rules in microbial microcosms |
| title_sort | community structure follows simple assembly rules in microbial microcosms |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123084 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT friedmanjonathan communitystructurefollowssimpleassemblyrulesinmicrobialmicrocosms AT higginsloganm communitystructurefollowssimpleassemblyrulesinmicrobialmicrocosms AT gorejeff communitystructurefollowssimpleassemblyrulesinmicrobialmicrocosms |