ArticleScience (New York, N.Y.)2015
The ecology of the microbiome: Networks, competition, and stability.
Article in Science (New York, N.Y.), 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1,117 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1,117 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Principles for Rigorous Design and Application of Synthetic Microbial Communities.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Pooled it
- Beyond Taxonomy: Fungal Nutraceutical Supplementation Modifies the Functional Potential of the Gut Microbiome in Colorectal Cancer.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Trial
- Effect ofNutrients · 2026Trial
- A retrospectively registered pilot randomized controlled trial of postbiotic administration during antibiotic treatment increases microbiome diversity and enriches health-associated taxa.Infection and immunity · 2026Trial
- Effect of the Food Matrix on the Survival to the Gastrointestinal Transit of Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus CRL1505: A Randomized, Controlled, Crossover Study.Molecular nutrition & food research · 2025Trial
- From gut dysbiosis to eubiosis: understanding microbiome recovery as an ecological process.Gut microbes · 2026Review
- Dynamic flexibility of the murine gut microbiota during morphine disturbance enables escape from the stable dysbiosis that is associated with addiction-like behavior.Gut microbes · 2026Article
- Orchestrating life's first community: molecular assembly by human milk oligosaccharides.Gut microbes · 2026Review
- A network dynamical simulation model for the study of antibiotic resistance in microbial communities.Gut microbes · 2026Article
- metaFun: An analysis pipeline for metagenomic big data with fast and unified functional searches.Gut microbes · 2026Article
- A metabolite-dependent mechanism by whichGut microbes · 2026Article
- Compatibility among Bacillus strains is linked to synthetic communities function, rhizosphere microbiome assembly and plant performance.Plant cell reports · 2026Article
- Microbiome-mediated resilience and cross-generational consequences in male Drosophila exposed to combined environmental stressors.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
- Thiamine cross-feeding drives microbial coexistence in the leaf microbiome.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- The type VI secretion system governs strain maintenance in a wild mammalian gut microbiome.eLife · 2026Article
- Challenges and Future Directives of Synthetic Biology in Engineering Plant-Microbe Partnerships for Sustainable Agriculture.Biotechnology and bioengineering · 2026Review
- Microbiome ecology and antibiotic treatment failure: resistance spread, microbial competition and community engineering.Microbial genomics · 2026Review
- The influence of cell morphology on the dynamics and stability of model bacterial communities.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- PlasmidRiskNet: An explainable machine-learning framework for antimicrobial resistance plasmid risk stratification.New microbes and new infections · 2026Article
- The FERM guild: a differentially correlated microbial module drives hypertension via metabolic flux perturbations.mSystems · 2026Article
1,057 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The human gut harbors a large and complex community of beneficial microbes that remain stable over long periods. This stability is considered critical for good health but is poorly understood. Here we develop a body of ecological theory to help us understand microbiome stability. Although cooperating networks of microbes can be efficient, we find that they are often unstable. Counterintuitively, this finding indicates that hosts can benefit from microbial competition when this competition dampens cooperative networks and increases stability. More generally, stability is promoted by limiting positive feedbacks and weakening ecological interactions. We have analyzed host mechanisms for maintaining stability-including immune suppression, spatial structuring, and feeding of community members-and support our key predictions with recent data.
Indexed as
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26542567What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.