Eriksen Rasmus Skytte, Krishna Sandeep
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India.
R Soc Open Sci. 2020 Sep 16;7(9):201118. doi: 10.1098/rsos.201118. eCollection 2020 Sep.
Bacterial communities are often highly diverse with several closely related species (or strains) coexisting together. These bacteria compete for resources and the competitive exclusion principle predicts that all but the fastest-growing bacteria will go extinct. When exposed to phage, it is predicted that bacterial strains with restriction-modification (RM) systems can circumvent the competitive exclusion principle and reach diversity of the order of the phage burst size. We show that with a trade-off between bacterial growth rates and the strength of their RM systems, the diversity of such an ecosystem can further increase several fold beyond the burst size limit. Moreover, we find that the ratio of the growth rate of a bacterial strain to the imperfection of its RM system is an excellent predictor of (i) whether the strain will go extinct or not, and (ii) the biomass of the strain if it survives. In contrast, the growth rate alone is not a determinant of either of these properties. Our work provides a quantitative example of a model ecosystem where the fitness of a species is determined not by growth rate, but by a trade-off between growth and defence against predators.
细菌群落通常具有高度的多样性,有几种密切相关的物种(或菌株)共存。这些细菌会争夺资源,而竞争排斥原理预测,除了生长最快的细菌外,其他所有细菌都会灭绝。当暴露于噬菌体时,可以预测具有限制修饰(RM)系统的细菌菌株能够规避竞争排斥原理,并达到噬菌体爆发大小数量级的多样性。我们表明,在细菌生长速率与其RM系统强度之间进行权衡时,这样一个生态系统的多样性可以进一步增加几倍,超过爆发大小的限制。此外,我们发现细菌菌株的生长速率与其RM系统的不完善程度之比,是(i)该菌株是否会灭绝以及(ii)如果该菌株存活其生物量的一个极佳预测指标。相比之下,仅生长速率并不能决定这些特性中的任何一个。我们的工作提供了一个模型生态系统的定量示例,其中一个物种的适应性不是由生长速率决定,而是由生长与抵御捕食者之间的权衡决定。