Wen Donghui's research group from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering published a paper revealing new progress in the "Hunger Games" of microbial survival

On January 10, 2022, "Nature Communications" published online the latest research results " Nutrient supply controls " by Professor Wen Donghui from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Professor Yang Yunfeng from Tsinghua University, and Professor Zhou Zhi from the University of Oklahoma, USA the linkage between species abundance and ecological interactions in marine bacterial communities " reports findings on biotic and abiotic factors influencing the differentiation of dominant or rare species in microbial communities
.

Figure a: Distribution map of data sources for microbial communities in coastal sediments and ocean water; Figure b: Microbial interaction network model and positive and negative correlations between dominant and rare species; Figure c: Conceptual framework of the "Hunger Games" hypothesis

The species diversity of microbial communities in the environment is extremely high, but there are few dominant species (ie, high-abundance species), and most of them are rare species with a relative abundance of less than 0.
1% or even 0.
01%
.

Dai Tianjiao, a 2019 doctoral graduate of the School of Environmental Science and Engineering (now a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Environment, Tsinghua University), is the first author of the paper, and Wen Donghui and Yang Yunfeng are the co-corresponding authors
.