Calibrating spatiotemporal models of microbial communities to microscopy data: A review
Fig 4
Calculating spatiotemporal summary statistics for microbial communities.
(a) Population counts over time capture the overall dynamics in a multispecies community. (b) The frequency of adjacent species in physical contact, determined by a contact network, provides a measure of intermixing between different species. (c) Summary statistics can be calculated from data averaged within a particular cell’s neighbourhood. (d) Single-species patch metrics, such as patch width and number of sectors, are useful for quantifying spatial patterns on a larger colony scale.