Figure 5.

Phage community resilience and its contribution to the resilience of the bacterial community. A characteristic of a healthy microbiome is its ability to recover quickly from perturbations, after which a new “steady state” is established. Antibiotic administration results in profound changes in the microbial community, while changes in the viral community are only moderate. Phage–bacteria network interactions increase after perturbation and new networks are established in the new steady states. The phage component likely contributes to the recovery of the microbial community through the mobilization of beneficial genes.