Structured environments foster competitor coexistence by manipulating interspecies interfaces.

ABSTRACT: 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 structu

SUBMITTER: Ursell T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7790539 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature