Can Neutral Models Explain Gut Microbiota Growth Rates Over Time?

Original title: Growth-rate distributions of gut microbiota time series: neutral models and temporal dependence

Authors: E. Brigatti, S. Azaele

This study focuses on understanding microbial population dynamics using growth-rate distributions. They employ a neutral model based on a stochastic equation to describe these dynamics. The model successfully replicates the observed growth-rate distribution in abundance time-series of microbiota. More notably, it accurately predicts how the distribution changes over time intervals (time lag $\tau$), demonstrating its temporal dependence and stability. Additionally, they explore a logistic model but find it unsuitable for describing the observed distribution. The results strongly support the neutral model with demographic stochasticity as the best-fit approach for explaining microbial growth-rate dynamics and stationary abundance distribution. This suggests that among these species, there aren’t significant demographic differences, implying that they share statistically similar vital rates. The study highlights the effectiveness of this model in characterizing microbial dynamics and abundance distributions.

Original article: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.10624