par Gonze, Didier ;Lahti, Leo;Raes, Jeroen JR;Faust, Karoline
Référence The I S M E Journal, 11, 10, page (2159-2166)
Publication Publié, 2017-10
Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : The study of host-associated microbial community composition has suggested the presence of alternative community types. We discuss three mechanisms that could explain these observations. The most commonly invoked mechanism links community types to a response to environmental change; alternatively, community types were shown to emerge from interactions between members of local communities sampled from a metacommunity. Here, we emphasize multi-stability as a third mechanism, giving rise to different community types in the same environmental conditions. We illustrate with a toy model how multi-stability can generate community types and discuss the consequences of multi-stability for data interpretation.