ArticleNature communications2024
Fragmented micro-growth habitats present opportunities for alternative competitive outcomes.
Article in Nature communications, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- From predicted bacteriocins to ecological function.Current research in microbial sciences · 2026Review
- Mineral substrates as evolutionary drivers of soil microbial diversity through the rare biosphere.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Droplet microfluidics strategies for overcoming bottlenecks in antibiotics discovery.iScience · 2026Review
- Carbon regime structures functional trait trajectories during primary succession in microorganisms.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- A microbiologist's field guide to community ecology.ISME communications · 2026Review
- Transitive interactions among rhizobia determine their symbiotic fitness.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Transfer and Fitness of ISMicroorganisms · 2025Article
- The silent microbial shift: climate change amplifies pathogen evolution, microbiome dysbiosis, and antimicrobial resistance.Tropical diseases, travel medicine and vaccines · 2025Review
- Mosses in Urban Environments as Passive Biofilters and Organisms Impacted by Asbestos-Contaminated Habitats.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Review
- Machine learning models for segmentation and classification of cyanobacterial cells.Photosynthesis research · 2025Article
- Habitat fragmentation enhances microbial collective defence.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Hydration conditions as a critical factor in antibiotic-mediated bacterial competition outcomes.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Droplet microfluidics for single-cell studies: a frontier in ecological understanding of microbiomes.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- Impact of micro-habitat fragmentation on microbial population growth dynamics.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Deciphering microbial spatial organization: insights from synthetic and engineered communities.ISME communications · 2025Review
- Machine Learning Models for Segmentation and Classification of Cyanobacterial Cells.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Fragmented micro-growth habitats present opportunities for alternative competitive outcomes.Nature communications · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Bacteria in nature often thrive in fragmented environments, like soil pores, plant roots or plant leaves, leading to smaller isolated habitats, shared with fewer species. This spatial fragmentation can significantly influence bacterial interactions, affecting overall community diversity. To investigate this, we contrast paired bacterial growth in tiny picoliter droplets (1-3 cells per 35 pL up to 3-8 cells per species in 268 pL) with larger, uniform liquid cultures (about 2 million cells per 140 µl). We test four interaction scenarios using different bacterial strains: substrate competition, substrate independence, growth inhibition, and cell killing. In fragmented environments, interaction outcomes are more variable and sometimes even reverse compared to larger uniform cultures. Both experiments and simulations show that these differences stem mostly from variation in initial cell population growth phenotypes and their sizes. These effects are most significant with the smallest starting cell populations and lessen as population size increases. Simulations suggest that slower-growing species might survive competition by increasing growth variability. Our findings reveal how microhabitat fragmentation promotes diverse bacterial interaction outcomes, contributing to greater species diversity under competitive conditions.
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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.