Fig. 4: The obligate mutualism is more susceptible to environmental stress than the prototroph.
From: Mutualism breakdown underpins evolutionary rescue in an obligate cross-feeding bacterial consortium
Each panel shows the growth rates of prototrophic (gray) and mutualistic consortium (green) under different stressors: salinity (%), p-nitrophenol (PNP, mM), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2, µM), and spectinomycin (µM). Each box plot displays the interquartile range (IQR) of the data, with the horizontal line inside the box indicating the median. The whiskers extend to 1.5 times the IQR, showing the range of the data distribution (n = 4 for all boxplots except PNP (0) and H2O2 (0), where n = 6, and spectinomycin (0), where n = 3). The lines connecting the boxplots in each panel indicate the median growth rates for the prototrophic and mutualistic groups across different conditions. P-values (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ns not significant) were determined by a two-sided Mann–Whitney U-test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
