Dynamic metabolic adaptation can promote species coexistence in competitive microbial communities
Fig 5
Rank distribution of the (decimal) logarithm of the stationary population densities for different values of the adaptation velocity d (see Figure J in S1 Text for more information on the parameters used).
The lines represent the average value over 100 iterations, while the opaque bands outline the standard error of the mean. For d = 0 (blue line) the rank distribution is very steep and only the first few species have a population density over 1 cell/mL (corresponding to ), while as d increases the distribution becomes more even. Setting
as the extinction threshold, approximately two thirds of the species in the system go extinct with d = 10−7 (yellow line), while all of them survive with d = 10−5.