Interaction patterns and diversity in assembled complex microbial communities

Advisor: Jeff Gore; Professor in MIT Physics of Living Systems.

Project Area: Biophysics；Microbial Community

- Simulated the dynamical assembly of ecological communities from a pool of species with generalized Lotka-Volterra model, the results showed that more diverse communities statistically exhibit stronger inter-species interaction strength.

- Demonstrated that this emergent strong interaction strength in diverse communities universally remains true when considering variation of carrying capacity, growth rate and mortality rate in initial species pool, which has been experimentally tested.

- Analyzed the dynamics of species loss in assembly process and found that extinct species are strongly inhibited by others while only weakly impact the growth of other species, which will be tested in microbial communities.

- Extended the above results to community level competition and coalescence, revealing that less diverse communities exhibit higher advantage and cohesiveness because of lower inter-species interaction strength within community.