ArticleNature communications2019
Dispersal homogenizes communities via immigration even at low rates in a simplified synthetic bacterial metacommunity.
Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 27 papers.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed.
- Microbial co-occurrence patterns and community assembly in seamount sediment cores: disentangling the effects of assembly processes on β-diversity.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Continental-Scale Climatic Zones Drive Reorganization of Lake Sediment Microbiome: Diversity, Assembly and Interaction Networks.Microorganisms · 2026Article
- Bacterial community adaptation after brackish and freshwater coalescence.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Agricultural land use shapes short and long‑term bacterial diversity, community structure, and assembly in biofilms of adjacent streams.Environmental microbiome · 2025Article
- Unveiling the ecological processes driving soil and lichen microbiome assembly along an urbanization gradient.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Article
- Dispersal promotes stability and persistence of exploited yeast mutualisms.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Terrestrial-aquatic connectivity structures microbial communities during the formation of thermokarst lakes.ISME communications · 2025Article
- Dispersal shapes compositional and functional diversity in aquatic microbial communities.mSystems · 2024Article
- Ecological processes shaping highly connected bacterial communities along strong environmental gradients.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2024Article
- Article
- Spatial versus spatio-temporal approaches for studying metacommunities: a multi-taxon analysis in Mediterranean and tropical temporary ponds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The Impact of Warming on Assembly Processes and Diversity Patterns of Bacterial Communities in Mesocosms.Microorganisms · 2023Article
- Assembly Processes and Biogeographical Characteristics of Soil Bacterial Sub-communities of Different Habitats in Urban Green Spaces.Current microbiology · 2023Article
- Enzyme adaptation to habitat thermal legacy shapes the thermal plasticity of marine microbiomes.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Stabilizing microbial communities by looped mass transfer.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Review
- Microdiversity characterizes prevalent phylogenetic clades in the glacier-fed stream microbiome.The ISME journal · 2022Article
- Contrasting Effects of Local Environmental and Biogeographic Factors on the Composition and Structure of Bacterial Communities in Arid Monospecific Mangrove Soils.Microbiology spectrum · 2022Article
- Functional attractors in microbial community assembly.Cell systems · 2022Article
- Soil acidification mediates changes in soil bacterial community assembly processes in response to agricultural intensification.Environmental microbiology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Selection and dispersal are ecological processes that have contrasting roles in the assembly of communities. Variable selection diversifies and strong dispersal homogenizes them. However, we do not know whether dispersal homogenizes communities directly via immigration or indirectly via weakening selection across habitats due to physical transfer of material, e.g., water mixing in aquatic ecosystems. Here we examine how dispersal homogenizes a simplified synthetic bacterial metacommunity, using a sequencing-independent approach based on flow cytometry and mathematical modeling. We show that dispersal homogenizes the metacommunity via immigration, not via weakening selection, and even when immigration is four times slower than growth. This finding challenges the current view that dispersal homogenizes communities only at high rates and explains why communities are homogeneous at small spatial scales. It also offers a benchmark for sequence-based studies in natural microbial communities where immigration rates can be inferred solely by using neutral models.
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