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Updated: Jun 26, 2026
09:24
Assembly and Tracking of Microbial Community Development within a Microwell Array Platform
Published on: June 6, 2017
Normative assembly rule reveals fairness in microbial communities.
Teemu Kuosmanen1,2, Juhani Rantanen3, Dovydas Kičiatovas1,2
1Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Plos Biology
|June 24, 2026
Summary
Ecological communities can be assessed for fairness using game theory. This study compares observed species abundance to a fair distribution based on Shapley values, revealing insights into community assembly dynamics.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Game Theory
- Microbial Ecology
Background:
- Community assembly is a fundamental ecological challenge.
- Predicting species abundance and distribution is crucial for understanding ecosystem dynamics.
- Game theory offers a normative framework for analyzing ecological interactions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the fairness of biomass distribution in microbial communities.
- To compare observed species abundance with a game-theoretically derived fair distribution (Shapley value).
- To develop and test a fair assembly rule for ecological communities.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of 56 distinct microbial community outcomes.
- Comparison of observed species abundance distributions with Shapley value-based distributions.
- Development of a fair assembly rule using the recursive definition of Shapley value.
Main Results:
- Identified microbial communities exhibiting fair biomass distribution according to Shapley values.
- Observed deviations from fair distribution in some communities, where abundances did not match objective contributions.
- Demonstrated that unfair community compositions can align with fair assembly principles once lower-level competitive outcomes are known.
Conclusions:
- Ecological dynamics play a distributive role in community assembly.
- The study provides empirical evidence for game-theoretic fairness in ecological systems.
- Laid theoretical groundwork for a normative community assembly theory.
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