Related papers: Multistability and regime shifts in microbial comm…
The growth of complex populations, such as microbial communities, forests, and cities, occurs over vastly different spatial and temporal scales. Although research in different fields has developed detailed, system-specific models to…
Microbiome-based stratification of healthy individuals into compositional categories, referred to as "community types", holds promise for drastically improving personalized medicine. Despite this potential, the existence of community types…
Empirical observations show that ecological communities can have a huge number of coexisting species, also with few or limited number of resources. These ecosystems are characterized by multiple type of interactions, in particular…
Empirical observations show that ecological communities can have a huge number of coexisting species, also with few or limited number of resources. These ecosystems are characterized by multiple type of interactions, in particular…
Species interactions through cross-feeding via leakage and uptake of chemicals are important in microbial communities, and play an essential role in the coexistence of diverse species. Here, we study a simple dynamical model of a microbial…
Over the past century, nonlinear difference and differential equations have been used to understand conditions for species coexistence. However, these models fail to account for random fluctuations due to demographic and environmental…
Forty years ago, Robert May questioned a central belief in ecology by proving that sufficiently large or complex ecological networks have probability of persisting close to zero. To prove this point, he analyzed large networks in which…
Many types of bacteria can survive under stress by switching stochastically between two different phenotypes: the "normals" who multiply fast, but are vulnerable to stress, and the "persisters" who hardly multiply, but are resilient to…
Environmental changes greatly influence the evolution of populations. Here, we study the dynamics of a population of two strains, one growing slightly faster than the other, competing for resources in a time-varying binary environment…
Ecology and evolution under changing environments are important in many subfields of biology with implications for medicine. Here, we explore an example: the consequences of fluctuating environments on the emergence of antibiotic…
Stoichiometric constraints play a role in the dynamics of natural populations, but are not explicitly considered in most mathematical models. Recent theoretical works suggest that these constraints can have a significant impact and should…
A packed community of exponentially proliferating microbes will spread in size exponentially. However, due to nutrient depletion, mechanical constraints, or other limitations, exponential proliferation is not indefinite, and the spreading…
Communication between cells is realized by exchange of biochemical substances. Due to internal organization of living systems and variability of external parameters, the exchange is heavily influenced by perturbations of various parameters…
Identifying early warning signs of sudden population changes and mechanisms leading to regime shifts are highly desirable in population biology. In this paper, a two-trophic ecosystem comprising of two species of predators, competing for…
Biofilm infections on medical implants are difficult to eradicate because insufficient nutrient availability promotes antibiotic-tolerant persister cells that survive treatment and reseed growth. Existing mathematical models usually omit…
Does an ecological community allow stable coexistence? Identifying the general principles that determine the answer to this question is a central problem of theoretical ecology. Random matrix theory approaches have uncovered the general…
Lately, experimental research on microbial symbioses based on nutrient exchange and interdependence has yielded a number of interesting findings, however an in-depth mathematical description of the exact underlying dynamics of such…
Microbiomes are complex systems comprised of many interacting species. Species can survive harsh or changing conditions by rapid adaptation, a process accelerated by the exchange of genetic material between different species through…
The introduction of non-native organisms into complex microbiome communities holds enormous potential to benefit society. However, microbiome engineering faces several challenges including successful establishment of the organism into the…
Evolutionary game theory has been successfully used to investigate the dynamics of systems, in which many entities have competitive interactions. From a physics point of view, it is interesting to study conditions under which a coordination…