Movie of pattern formation.  This movie animates community in Figure 4D-F

Christopher A. Klausmeier (2915993)

Evan Curtis Johnson (4917703)

Simon Maccracken Stump (4917706)

Mutualisms are ubiquitous, but models predict they should be susceptible to cheating.  Resolving this paradox has become relevant to synthetic ecology: cooperative cross-feeding, a nutrient exchange mutualism, has been proposed to stabilize microbial consortia.  Previous attempts to understand how cross-feeders remain robust to non-producing cheaters have relied on complex behavior (e.g., cheater punishment) or group selection.  Using a stochastic spatial model, we demonstrate two novel mechanisms that can allow cross-feeders to outcompete cheaters, rather than just escape from them.  Both mechanisms work through the spatial segregation of the resources, which prevents individual cheaters from acquiring the resources they need to reproduce.  First, if microbe dispersal is low but resources are shared widely, then the cross-feeders self-organize into stable spatial patterns.  Here the cross-feeders can build up where the resource they need is abundant, and send their resource to where their partner is, separating resources at regular intervals in space.  Second, if dispersal is high but resource sharing is local, then random variation in population density creates small-scale variation in resource density, separating the resources from each other by chance.  These results suggest that cross-feeding may be more robust than previously expected and offer strategies to engineer stable consortia.Data for publicationThis contains the data used to make Fig. 2, and all of the appendix figures.  It can be analyzed using the Matlab code in the code_for_paper document.ssm_data.zipCode for paperThis is a zip file that contains all of the code needed to run the simulations described in our paper, and everything needed to analyze it and recreate the figures. It includes a README.code_for_JRSI.zipFunding provided by: National Science FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001Award Number: n

Stump, Simon Maccracken

Johnson, Evan Curtis

Klausmeier, Christopher A.

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Data from: Local interactions and self-organized spatial patterns stabilize microbial cross-feeding against cheaters

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Movie A2 from Local interactions and self-organized spatial patterns stabilize microbial cross-feeding against cheaters

Mutualisms are ubiquitous, but models predict they should be susceptible to cheating. Resolving this paradox has become relevant to synthetic ecology: cooperative cross-feeding, a nutrient exchange mutualism, has been proposed to stabilize microbial consortia. Previous attempts to understand how cross-feeders remain robust to non-producing cheaters have relied on complex behavior (e.g., cheater punishment) or group selection. Using a stochastic spatial model, we demonstrate two novel mechanisms that can allow cross-feeders to outcompete cheaters, rather than just escape from them. Both mechanisms work through the spatial segregation of the resources, which prevents individual cheaters from acquiring the resources they need to reproduce. First, if microbe dispersal is low but resources are shared widely, then the cross-feeders self-organize into stable spatial patterns. Here the cross-feeders can build up where the resource they need is abundant, and send their resource to where their partner is, separating resources at regular intervals in space. Second, if dispersal is high but resource sharing is local, then random variation in population density creates small-scale variation in resource density, separating the resources from each other by chance. These results suggest that cross-feeding may be more robust than previously expected and offer strategies to engineer stable consortia

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Movie of partner fidelity feedback.  This movie animates the community in Figure 4A-C

Movie A1 from Local interactions and self-organized spatial patterns stabilize microbial cross-feeding against cheaters

Mutualisms are ubiquitous, but models predict they should be susceptible to cheating. Resolving this paradox has become relevant to synthetic ecology: cooperative cross-feeding, a nutrient-exchange mutualism, has been proposed to stabilize microbial consortia. Previous attempts to understand how cross-feeders remain robust to non-producing cheaters have relied on complex behaviour (e.g. cheater punishment) or group selection. Using a stochastic spatial model, we demonstrate two novel mechanisms that can allow cross-feeders to outcompete cheaters, rather than just escape from them. Both mechanisms work through the spatial segregation of the resources, which prevents individual cheaters from acquiring the resources they need to reproduce. First, if microbe dispersal is low but resources are shared widely, then the cross-feeders self-organize into stable spatial patterns. Here the cross-feeders can build up where the resource they need is abundant, and send their resource to where their partner is, separating resources at regular intervals in space. Second, if dispersal is high but resource sharing is local, then random variation in population density creates small-scale variation in resource density, separating the resources from each other by chance. These results suggest that cross-feeding may be more robust than previously expected and offer strategies to engineer stable consortia.</jats:p

Simon Maccracken Stump

Evan Curtis Johnson

Christopher A. Klausmeier

Crossref

Journal of The Royal Society Interface

Local interactions and self-organized spatial patterns stabilize microbial cross-feeding against cheaters

Mutualisms are ubiquitous, but models predict they should be susceptible to cheating.  Resolving this paradox has become relevant to synthetic ecology: cooperative cross-feeding, a nutrient exchange mutualism, has been proposed to stabilize microbial consortia.  Previous attempts to understand how cross-feeders remain robust to non-producing cheaters have relied on complex behavior (e.g., cheater punishment) or group selection.  Using a stochastic spatial model, we demonstrate two novel mechanisms that can allow cross-feeders to outcompete cheaters, rather than just escape from them.  Both mechanisms work through the spatial segregation of the resources, which prevents individual cheaters from acquiring the resources they need to reproduce.  First, if microbe dispersal is low but resources are shared widely, then the cross-feeders self-organize into stable spatial patterns.  Here the cross-feeders can build up where the resource they need is abundant, and send their resource to where their partner is, separating resources at regular intervals in space.  Second, if dispersal is high but resource sharing is local, then random variation in population density creates small-scale variation in resource density, separating the resources from each other by chance.  These results suggest that cross-feeding may be more robust than previously expected and offer strategies to engineer stable consortia

Dryad Digital Repository (Duke University)

https://figshare.com/articles/Movie_A1_from_Local_interactions_and_self-organized_spatial_patterns_stabilize_microbial_cross-feeding_against_cheaters/5955775

Movie A2 from Local interactions and self-organized spatial patterns stabilize microbial cross-feeding against cheaters

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