How public can public goods be? Environmental context shapes the evolutionary ecology of partially private goods
Fig 2
A broad overview of the colimitation model system.
(a) We model cell populations that uptake, and may facultatively produce, nitrogen and siderophores at rates determined by the extracellular concentrations of these resources. The effects of increasing each production/uptake parameter, relative to the thickest curve, is shown. (b) We consider four different strains (functions performed by these strains marked with checks in (a), functions not performed marked with x’s): Full (fixes nitrogen and produces siderophores), LOFN (a LOF fixation mutant that only produces siderophores), LOFS (a LOF siderophore mutant that only fixes nitrogen), and LOFB (a LOF mutant that neither fixes nitrogen nor produces siderophores). (c) Because extracellular resource concentrations govern resource uptake and, when applicable, production, the cell population growth rate is also a function of extracellular resource concentrations. According to our colimitation model, availability of siderophores mediates the effect of fixed nitrogen on growth.