Simple organizing principles in microbial communities

Abstract

There is a great deal of interest in discovering the principles that organize microbial communities, to better understand the structure and diversity of these communities in the natural world. Recent conceptual and technical advances have shown how simple organizing principles can give rise to surprising diversity and complex patterns in these consortia. Understanding competition, cooperation, and communication among microbes has provided novel insights into the structure and behavior of microbial collectives, and the use of simple animal models has advanced our understanding of microbial ecology in the host. These multidisciplinary efforts to understand and predict the properties of microbial communities will be critical in the development of microbial ecology as an applied science.