Pervasive Selection for Cooperative Cross-Feeding in Bacterial Communities
Fig 3
Prevalence of unilateral and bilateral cross-feeding.
Sizes of circles represent the mean proportion of (A, C) unilateral and (B, D) bilateral cross-feeding that included all interactions depicted in the schematic above. Colors of circles represent the mean connectivity between cell types that measures the co-occurrence of genotypes and thus reflects the probability of genotypes to display one or the other type of cross-feeding. 100 simulation runs were analyzed per parameter combination. Simulation results with (A, B) no or (B, D) a substantial addition of amino acids to the environment are displayed. Parameter combinations that were analyzed in each panel include the benefit-to-cost ratio (x-axes) and the degree of metabolite diffusion in the environment (y-axes) ranging from low (structured environment) to high (unstructured environment).