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Quantifying the roles of immigration and chance in shaping prokaryote community structure
Author(s) -
Sloan William T.,
Lunn Mary,
Woodcock Stephen,
Head Ian M.,
Nee Sean,
Curtis Thomas P.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
environmental microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.954
H-Index - 188
eISSN - 1462-2920
pISSN - 1462-2912
DOI - 10.1111/j.1462-2920.2005.00956.x
Subject(s) - biology , ecology , community structure , competition (biology) , process (computing) , immigration , range (aeronautics) , taxon , prokaryote , archaea , evolutionary biology , law , computer science , bacteria , materials science , genetics , political science , composite material , operating system
Summary Naturally occurring populations of bacteria and archaea are vital to life on the earth and are of enormous practical significance in medicine, engineering and agriculture. However, the rules governing the formation of such communities are still poorly understood, and there is a need for a usable mathematical description of this process. Typically, microbial community structure is thought to be shaped mainly by deterministic factors such as competition and niche differentiation. Here we show, for a wide range of prokaryotic communities, that the relative abundance and frequency with which different taxa are observed in samples can be explained by a neutral community model (NCM). The NCM, which is a stochastic, birth–death immigration process, does not explicitly represent the deterministic factors and therefore cannot be a complete or literal description of community assembly. However, its success suggests that chance and immigration are important forces in shaping the patterns seen in prokaryotic communities.