Extended Data Fig. 5: The stability of plasmid abundance increases with the plasmid transfer rate even before the system has reached equilibrium.

Here, 200 species pools were assembled in silico, and each was composed of 100 species transferring 20 plasmids. For each master community, we randomized the parameters in the ranges of −0.05 < γ < 0.05, 0 < δ <0.2, 0.2 < μ < 0.6, 0 < κ < 0.05, −0.05< λ < 0.05, and 0 < η < 0.1. 40 local communities were created for every master community by random sampling. On average, each local population contained 50 species. The ϕ values of the plasmids in the local communities were calculated by numerical simulations. The relationships between the stability ϕ and mean plasmid transfer rate at 4 different timepoints (t = 70, 100, 200 and 500 hours) were shown. Error bars represent mean +/− standard deviation of the ϕ values in each bin (n = 400 independent data points).