ArticleNature ecology & evolution2021
Resource-diversity relationships in bacterial communities reflect the network structure of microbial metabolism.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2021. 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 101 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
101 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Coexistence Theory for Microbial Ecology, and Vice Versa.Environmental microbiology · 2025Pooled it
- Cross-feeding enables robust coexistence between four bacterial species.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Increased nutrient diversity can induce loss of microbial diversity through enhanced resource uptake.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Diverse Microbial Communities Assemble on Both Recalcitrant and Labile Carbon Sources.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Change of the active bacteria mediating HCOiScience · 2026Article
- The network structure of cross-feeding impacts microbial community diversity under growth-inhibiting stresses.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Dispersal Enhances Abiotic Adaptation in Populations Under Interspecific Competition Compared to Isolation.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- From death comes diversity.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Emergent coexistence and the limits of reductionism in ecological communities.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- A Concept Using α-Niche Evolution Within Bacterial Communities to Direct β-Niche Evolution of Focal Species.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Bacterial necromass recycling promotes diversity maintenance in bacterial communities via resource partitioning.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- The assembly of microbial communities on red sandstone surfaces was shaped by dispersal limitation and heterogeneous selection.mSystems · 2026Article
- Environmental complexity shapes maintenance of bacterial diversity through context-dependent interactions among niche axes.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Article
- Carbon substrate type shapes spatial self-organization in a multi-species biofilm community.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Hypersensitivity of chitin degradation to initial species densities due to monomer diffusion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Community state shifts driven by total carbon availability over resource complexity in a synthetic microbial community.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Underground coal mining reduces organic carbon stability and alters microbial metabolic limitation in biocrusts of an arid region in northern China.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- A microbiologist's field guide to community ecology.ISME communications · 2026Review
41 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The relationship between the number of available nutrients and community diversity is a central question in ecological research that remains unanswered. Here we studied the assembly of hundreds of soil-derived microbial communities on a wide range of well-defined resource environments, from single carbon sources to combinations of up to 16. We found that, while single resources supported multispecies communities varying from 8 to 40 taxa, mean community richness increased only one-by-one with additional resources. Cross-feeding could reconcile these seemingly contrasting observations, with the metabolic network seeded by the supplied resources explaining the changes in richness due to both the identity and the number of resources, as well as the distribution of taxa across different communities. By using a consumer-resource model incorporating the inferred cross-feeding network, we provide further theoretical support to our observations and a framework to link the type and number of environmental resources to microbial community diversity.
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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.