ArticlePLoS computational biology2026
Eco-evolutionary dynamics lead to functionally robust and redundant communities.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Emergent frequency-dependent selection predicts mutation outcomes in complex ecological communities.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Closed ecosystems extract energy through self-organized nutrient cycles.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Eco-evolutionary feedbacks in the human gut microbiome.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Functional convergence in slow-growing microbial communities arises from thermodynamic constraints.The ISME journal · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Microbial communities are taxonomically diverse and variable: species presence and abundances widely fluctuate over time, space, and even across biological replicates under controlled experimental conditions. However, environmental conditions exert strong selection on the traits of community members and their functions. Similar environmental conditions are expected to produce functionally similar communities. This environmental selection, combined with taxonomic variability, leads to the influential concept of functional redundancy - the idea that many species can perform the same function, allowing communities with different species compositions to maintain identical functional profiles. Despite the centrality of functional redundancy in microbial ecology, we lack a theoretical understanding of its origin. Here we study the eco-evolutionary dynamics of communities interacting through competition and cross-feeding. We show that eco-evolutionary trajectories rapidly converge to a "functional attractor" - a functional composition uniquely determined by environmental conditions. Taxonomic composition follows non-reproducible dynamics while being constrained by the conservation of functional composition. Our framework provides a theoretical foundation for understanding functional robustness and redundancy in microbial communities.
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Registered trials
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