ReviewFEMS microbiology reviews2026
Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.
Review in FEMS microbiology reviews, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 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
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Spatial constraints determine the spread of plasmid-encoded antibiotic resistance between bacterial colonies.mSystems · 2026Article
- Biogeographic and Habitat-Associated Variation in the Gut Microbiota of the Stingless BeeInsects · 2026Article
- Minding the gap: collective determinants of multiscale structure across interacting bacterial colonies.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Periprosthetic joint infection as failure of containment: A causal and probabilistic framework.Journal of orthopaedic translation · 2026Article
- Cross hybridization Inference for Phylogenetic Resolution (CIPHR)-FISH enables microbiome imaging with strain level taxonomic resolution.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Architectural intelligence: toward a spatial framework for interpreting microbiome-associated human disease.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Influence of cell-cell distance on the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.The ISME journal · 2026Review
- Cooperative antibiotic resistance in bacteria: beyond biofilms.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Bacterial community adaptation after brackish and freshwater coalescence.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
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Most microbes grow in spatially structured communities, and this profoundly shapes their ecology and evolution. At the microscale, short interaction ranges and steep nutrient gradients underlie cross-feeding, quorum sensing, and niche construction, generating spatial patterns that influence microbial behavior, community assembly, and stability. Here, we review theoretical and experimental evidence for how spatial organization drives eco-evolutionary processes, including founder effects during colonization, allele surfing during range expansion, emergent patterns that facilitate multilevel selection, and the exploration of rare epistatic genotypes. While the ecological and evolutionary consequences of spatial structure at the microscale are becoming clearer, linking these processes across scales to predict community- and ecosystem-level outcomes remains a major challenge. Addressing spatial interactions explicitly in microbiome research will be key. Recent advances in computational modeling, cultivation approaches, and omics now offer unprecedented opportunities to meet this challenge, providing fresh insights into how spatial structure governs the organization and dynamics of the microbial world across scales.
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.