Insights into microbial community structure from pairwise interaction networks

Microbial communities are typically incredibly diverse, with many species contributing to the overall function of the community. The structure of these communities is the result of many complex biotic and abiotic factors. In this thesis, my colleagues and I employ a bottom-up approach to investigate the role of interspecies interactions in determining the structure of multispecies communities. First, we investigate the network of pairwise competitive interactions in a model community consisting of 20 strains of naturally co-occurring soil bacteria. The resulting interaction network is strongly hierarchical and lacks significant non-transitive motifs, a result that is robust across multiple environments. Multispecies competitions resulted in extinction of all but the most highly competitive strains, indicating that higher order interactions do not play a major role in structuring this community.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Higgins, Logan Massie.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jeff Gore.

• Biology.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113465

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/113465