ArticleNature ecology & evolution2023
A social niche breadth score reveals niche range strategies of generalists and specialists.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers.
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
59 citing papers in PubMed.
- Top-down/bottom-up consortia achieve robust γ-HCH degradation and reduced methanogenic contribution in wetlands.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Caste-Associated Gut Microbial Diversity and Predicted Functional Profiles inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Elucidating the Impact of Bacterial Composition and Diversity on Skin Homeostasis Using a Human 3D In Vitro Skin Model.Microorganisms · 2026Article
- Genome-guided characterization ofMicrobiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Plant Species With an Acquisitive Resource-Use Strategy Exhibit Lower Wood Density and Display Greater Intraspecific Variation.Plant, cell & environment · 2026Article
- Slow Evolution Towards Generalism in a Model of Variable Dietary Range.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2026Article
- Comparative Analysis of Gut Microbiome Diversity, Stability, and Predicted Function in Captive Guanacos (Microorganisms · 2026Article
- Ecological and evolutionary drivers of trait-based symbiosis and phylosymbiosis in avian gut microbiota.Science China. Life sciences · 2026Article
- Cooperative traits maintain bacterial niche breadth.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The Evolutionary and Ecological Consequences of Cooperation.The American naturalist · 2026Review
- LLM-Assessed Relatedness of Microbiome Study Descriptions Aligns more Strongly with Functional than with Taxonomic Profile Similarity.Microbial ecology · 2026Article
- Cooperation and the evolution of bacterial niche breadth.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Bacterial metabolic remodeling by convergent evolution unlocks nutrient availability after a host switch.Science advances · 2026Article
- Community conservatism is widespread across microbial phyla and environments.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Historical contingency limits adaptive diversification in a spatially structured environment.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- The assembly of microbial communities on red sandstone surfaces was shaped by dispersal limitation and heterogeneous selection.mSystems · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Exploring cooperation among social pathogens: a computational perspective.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Bacterial community adaptation after brackish and freshwater coalescence.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Microhabitat-specific restructuring of soil protist communities along a tropical land-use intensification gradient.ISME communications · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Generalists can survive in many environments, whereas specialists are restricted to a single environment. Although a classical concept in ecology, niche breadth has remained challenging to quantify for microorganisms because it depends on an objective definition of the environment. Here, by defining the environment of a microorganism as the community it resides in, we integrated information from over 22,000 environmental sequencing samples to derive a quantitative measure of the niche, which we call social niche breadth. At the level of genera, we explored niche range strategies throughout the prokaryotic tree of life. We found that social generalists include opportunists that stochastically dominate local communities, whereas social specialists are stable but low in abundance. Social generalists have a more diverse and open pan-genome than social specialists, but we found no global correlation between social niche breadth and genome size. Instead, we observed two distinct evolutionary strategies, whereby specialists have relatively small genomes in habitats with low local diversity, but relatively large genomes in habitats with high local diversity. Together, our analysis shines data-driven light on microbial niche range strategies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What 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.