< Back to Article
Cluster dispersal shapes microbial diversity during community assembly
Fig 4
Cluster dispersal and within-community selection alter species abundance in a non-monotonic way.
Panel A shows the mean relative abundance of A 
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 for different abundances in the pool 
in the low-dispersal regime. In both panels, the simulated data are averaged over 104 microbial communities, whereas the solid lines represent our analytical predictions (Eqs 4 and 5). The 95% confidence interval bars are smaller than the markers and therefore are not displayed in the figure. In Panel A, 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. In both panels, the horizontal lines show the relative abundance of species A in the microbial pool. Parameter values: replication rate of A 
, replication rate of B 
, dispersal rate c = 10−4 (in B), relative abundance of A in the pool 
(in A), carrying capacity K = 105.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013918.g004