Cluster dispersal shapes microbial diversity during community assembly
Fig 3
Cluster dispersal blurs the boundary between assembly regimes.
Panel A shows the bimodality coefficient BC as a function of the dispersal rate c for various cluster sizes n, whereas panel B shows it as a function of the cluster size n. In all panels, each data point corresponds to the bimodality coefficient of an abundance fluctuation distribution obtained from 104 simulated microbial communities. The solid lines represent our analytical predictions (see Eq 3). The two vertical dotted lines indicate key dispersal thresholds: , where the mean time between the first and second dispersal events equals the time to reach carrying capacity via replication, and c = r, where dispersal and replication rates are equal. Parameter values: replication rates
, dispersal rate c = 10−4 (in B), relative abundance of A in the pool
, carrying capacity K = 105.