Stoichiometric analysis of microbial communities: interrelating community function, structure and biomass carrying capacity

Abstract

Microbial communities carry out important ecological functions. Their activities emerge from complex interactions between species, often potentiated by metabolic traits. We lack a quantitative understanding of how these traits shape community properties. Here, we present the theory for microbial communities, leveraging concepts from quantitative microbial physiology. We derive formal conditions for the steady states of microbial communities. We express the relative abundances of species (living and dead), the net metabolic conversion of a community, and the biomass carrying capacity in terms of the metabolic stoichiometry of the species and their growth and death rates. We show how niche creation can emerge from stoichiometric imbalances in cross-feeding communities. Finally, we discuss how relative species abundances depend on the ATP stoichiometries of intracellular metabolism.