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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Apr 7.
Published in final edited form as: Prog Mol Biol Transl Sci. 2020 Sep 24;176:1–42. doi: 10.1016/bs.pmbts.2020.08.013

Figure 1. Summary of ecological processes that impact community assembly.

Figure 1.

A) Dispersal refers to the immigration and emigration of microbes between local habitats. The meta-community species pool represents the collection of microbial species present across all local habitats. As species disperse between these habitats, they can be limited by factors such as motility and distance from the source community. B) Selection refers to the process whereby species better adapted to their environment tend to survive better and produce more offspring. Some potential habitat filters relevant to microbial life are listed between the dashed lines. C) Drift refers to random fluctuations in species abundances due to stochastic changes in birth and death rates over time. This can disproportionately impact low-abundance species, which can become extinct after a random dip in abundance. D) Diversification refers to the generation of new genetic variants within a population.