Modelling fungal competition for space:Towards prediction of community dynamics

Abstract

Filamentous fungi contribute to ecosystem and human-induced processes such as primary production, bioremediation, biogeochemical cycling and biocontrol. Predicting the dynamics of fungal communities can hence improve our forecasts of ecological processes which depend on fungal community structure. In this work, we aimed to develop simple theoretical models of fungal interactions with ordinary and partial differential equations, and to validate model predictions against community dynamics of a three species empirical system. We found that space is an important factor for the prediction of community dynamics, since the performance was poor for models of ordinary differential equations assuming well-mixed nutrient substrate. The models of partial differential equations could satisfactorily predict the dynamics of a single species, but exhibited limitations which prevented the prediction of empirical community dynamics. One such limitation is the arbitrary choice of a threshold local density above which a fungal mycelium is considered present in the model. In conclusion, spatially explicit simulation models, able to incorporate different factors influencing interaction outcomes and hence dynamics, appear as a more promising direction towards prediction of fungal community dynamics.2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary: 92B05; Secondary: 34A34, 35Q92, 92D40.

Percolation on feature-enriched interconnected systems

“…4(a)). This scenario can be relevant, for instance, in spatial ecological models in which there is a competition for resources 50,51 . Note that this particular choice of the occupation probability is made for illustrative purposes, and without much effort, one could envision other relevant scenarios, for example, with φ F = θ (−(F − r 0 )) or that take the distance to the furthest neighbor d max as the feature.…”

Heat stress can change the competitive outcome between fungi: insights from a modelling approach

“…Follow‐up studies have combined both approaches, simulating different types of biomass (Boswell et al 2002, 2003, Falconer et al 2005, 2007). Later models have also included interactions between fungal competitors (Falconer et al 2008, Boswell 2012, Choudhury et al 2018, Kiziridis et al 2020) by, for example, adding secondary metabolite production. So far, no modelling study has included induced stress defences in fungi.…”