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Environmental and ecological controls of the spatial distribution of microbial populations in aggregates
Fig 5
Commensalism [0,+,+].
(A) Relative abundances of B1, B2 and B3 populations in the community. Dashed red lines indicate 33.33% and 66.66% relative abundances. Square brackets with asterisks indicate the significance level of the difference between relative abundances between populations. Colour of asterisks points out what bacteria it refers to. (B) Microbial fitness (median, 
) is calculated in all replicates (n = 3 for 1.0 mM and 0.5 mM; n = 6 for 0.2 mM and 0.1 mM). (C) Aggregates captured at steady state (50 d for 1.0 mM and 0.5 mM, 75 d for 0.2 mM and 0.1 mM). Inactive bacteria are shown in a lighter colour. Black solid lines on bottom represent the scale bars. (D) Transient change of growth rate ratios of active B2 and B3 over B1 (
and 
, respectively) in all replicates (n = 3 for 1.0 mM and 0.5 mM; n = 6 for 0.2 mM and 0.1 mM). Growth rate ratios, normalise the comparison and reduce the influence of substrate concentration in the analysis. Dimensionless time was applied to compare simulations with different time length (tmax). Asterisks indicate the significance level of difference between 1.0 mM and the other concentrations (1.0 mM vs 0.5 mM; 1.0 mM vs 0.2 mM; 1.0 mM vs 0.1 mM). Colour of asterisks: red–growth rate ratio at [S] is lower than that at 1.0 mM; blue–growth rate ratio at [S] is higher than that at 1.0 mM. Significance level legend: ns, not significant; *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01; ***, p < 0.001. Width of the lines indicate the time to which the significance level corresponds. Colour of the lines: green–B2; orange–B3.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010807.g005