Fig. 5: Effect of oxygen on the dissipation-yield relation.

a Mean biomass yield, \(\bar{y}\), for 30 pairs of groups of metabolic types that use the same electron donor anaerobically (non-oxygen) and aerobically (oxygen). A dashed line is drawn connecting each pair. The marker size represents the amount of data in each group. For most pairs, the aerobic group has a higher yield than the anaerobic counterpart. b The same as panel (a) but for dissipation, \(\bar{\sigma }\), showing the same trend. c The same as panels (a, b) but for the cost, α, which is more conserved within pairs and shows no clear trend. d The same as panels (a–c), but for the deviation coefficient, β. For aerobic types β is large and negative, indicating a trade-off between yield and dissipation. Two exceptions correspond to anaerobic respiration of nitrate \({{{\rm{NO}}}}_{3}^{-}\): reduction to ammonia (purple triangle) shows a value of β intermediate to those of anaerobic and aerobic types, reduction to nitrogen (orange triangle) shows a value of β indistinguishable from that of aerobic types. e–h Examples of deviation of yield and dissipation for three pairs, which agree with the trend in Fig. 3c (see Supplementary Fig. 9 for all the deviations). Panel h shows an exception, in which the anaerobic electron acceptor nitrate produces a steep slope similar to aerobic types.