Fig. 2.

Damping ratio of the two-pool microbial model as a function of the model parameters. The damping ratio (ζ) is a metric that depicts the degree of oscillatory behavior of the linearized system near its steady state, where ζ = 1 signifies a stable node, 0 < ζ < 1 damped (diminishing) oscillations, − 1 < ζ < 0 unstable (growing) oscillations, and ζ = − 1 an unstable node. Here all parameters were varied independently from their default value (Supplementary Table 1) by the given multiplier (x-axis) to illustrate the inherent sensitivity of the oscillations on the parameter values. The model stability is very sensitive to the density-dependence exponent (β)