ArticleeLife2023
Spatial structure favors microbial coexistence except when slower mediator diffusion weakens interactions.
Article in eLife, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 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
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- To Move or Not to Move: When and How Bacteria Suppress Flagellar Motility.Molecular microbiology · 2026Review
- Rapid evolution in necromass use under resource limitation reduces persistence in producer-decomposer microbial biospheres.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Minimizing co-growth as a broad predictor of community robustness.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Interplay of Spatial Structure and Interactions in Microbial Communities.Environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Environmental complexity shapes maintenance of bacterial diversity through context-dependent interactions among niche axes.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Phase separation and coexistence in spatial coordination games between microbes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Evolution and stability of complex microbial communities driven by trade-offs.Molecular systems biology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Microbes often exist in spatially structured environments and many of their interactions are mediated through diffusible metabolites. How does such a context affect microbial coexistence? To address this question, we use a model in which the spatial distributions of species and diffusible interaction mediators are explicitly included. We simulate the enrichment process, examining how microbial species spatially reorganize and how eventually a subset of them coexist. In our model, we find that slower motility of cells promotes coexistence by allowing species to co-localize with their facilitators and avoid their inhibitors. We additionally find that a spatially structured environment is more influential when species mostly facilitate each other, rather than when they are mostly competing. More coexistence is observed when species produce many mediators and consume some (not many or few) mediators, and when overall consumption and production rates are balanced. Interestingly, coexistence appears to be disfavored when mediators are diffusing slowly because that leads to weaker interaction strengths. Overall, our results offer new insights into how production, consumption, motility, and diffusion intersect to determine microbial coexistence in a spatially structured environment.
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.