Abstract
Stochastic processes can play an important role in microbial community assembly. Dispersal limitation is one process that can increase stochasticity and obscure relationships between environmental variables and microbial community composition, but the relationship between dispersal, selection and stochasticity has not been described in a comprehensive way. We examine how dispersal and its interactions with drift and selection alter the consistency with which microbial communities assemble using a realistic, individual-based model of microbial decomposers. Communities were assembled under different environmental conditions and dispersal rates in repeated simulations, and we examined the compositional difference among replicate communities colonizing the same type of leaf litter (‘within-group distance’), as well as between-group deterministic selection. Dispersal rates below 25% turnover per year resulted in high within-group distance among communities and no significant environmental effects. As dispersal limitation was alleviated, both within- and between-group distance decreased, but despite this homogenization, deterministic environmental effects remained significant. In addition to direct effects of dispersal rate, stochasticity of community composition was influenced by an interaction between dispersal and selection strength. Specifically, communities experiencing stronger selection (less favorable litter chemistries) were more stochastic, possibly because lower biomass and richness intensified drift or priority effects. Overall, we show that dispersal rate can significantly alter patterns of community composition. Partitioning the effects of dispersal, selection and drift based on static patterns of microbial composition will be difficult, if not impossible. Experiments will be required to tease apart these complex interactions between assembly processes shaping microbial communities.
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Acknowledgements
This manuscript is dedicated to the memory of Diana R Nemergut. This work was funded by the National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (NSF DEB 1202882) to SE and the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), under Award Number DE-PS02-09ER09-25 to SDA and JBHM. This is Kellogg Biological Station Contribution no. 1912. We also thank the Allison and Martiny labs at UC Irvine for helpful feedback, and Dylan Fitzpatrick for help with analysis. Finally, we thank Jenny Rocca, Gary Mittelbach, James Stegen, and one anonymous reviewer whose comments greatly improved the quality of this paper.
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Evans, S., Martiny, J. & Allison, S. Effects of dispersal and selection on stochastic assembly in microbial communities. ISME J 11, 176–185 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2016.96
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2016.96
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