The macroecological dynamics of sojourn trajectories in the human gut microbiome
William R. Shoemaker, Jacopo Grilli

TL;DR
The study explores how gut microbes fluctuate around stable levels over time and finds that these fluctuations are influenced more by environmental noise than by average abundance.
Contribution
The study introduces a novel application of the stochastic logistic model to characterize sojourn trajectories in the gut microbiome.
Findings
The duration of sojourn trajectories is not linked to microbial abundance but is strongly influenced by environmental noise.
A stochastic logistic model explains the length, height, and deviation of sojourn trajectories in microbial communities.
Microbial fluctuations return to steady-state levels over typical timescales without leading to extinction or dominance.
Abstract
The human gut microbiome is a dynamic ecosystem. Host behaviors (e.g., diet) provide a regular source of environmental variation that induces fluctuations in the abundances of resident microbiota. Despite these displacements, microbial community members remain highly resilient. Population abundances tend to fluctuate around a characteristic steady-state over long timescales in healthy human hosts. These temporary excursions from steady-state abundances, known as sojourn trajectories, have the potential to inform our understanding of the fundamental dynamics of the microbiome. However, to our knowledge, the macroecology of sojourn trajectories has yet to be systematically characterized. In this study, we leverage theoretical tools from the study of random walks to characterize the duration of sojourn trajectories, their shape, and the degree that diverse community members exhibit similar…
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Taxonomy
TopicsGut microbiota and health · Clostridium difficile and Clostridium perfringens research · Bacteriophages and microbial interactions
