Transient invaders can induce shifts between stable states of microbial communities

Microbial dispersal often leads to the arrival of outsider organisms into ecosystems. When their arrival give rise to successful invasions, outsider species establish within the resident community, which can dramatically alter the ecosystem. Seemingly less influential, the potential impact of unsuccessful invaders that interact only transiently with the community has remained largely ignored. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that such transient invasions can perturb the stability of microbial ecosystems and induce a lasting transition to an alternative stable state, even when the invader species itself does not survive the transition. First, we develop a mechanistic understanding of how environmental changes caused by such transient invaders can drive a community shift in a simple, bistable model system. Beyond this, we show that transient invaders can also induce switches between stable states in more complex communities isolated from natural soil samples. Our results demonstrate th...

微生物扩散往往导致外来生物进入生态系统。当它们的到来引发成功入侵时，外来物种会在本地群落中定殖，这可能显著改变生态系统。那些仅与群落短暂相互作用的不成功入侵者，其潜在影响看似较小，却在很大程度上被忽视了。在此，我们通过实验证明，此类短暂入侵能够扰动微生物生态系统的稳定性，并诱导其向替代稳定状态发生持久转变——即便入侵者物种自身并未在转变过程中存活。首先，我们在一个简单的双稳态模型系统中，建立了关于此类短暂入侵者引发的环境变化如何驱动群落转变的机制性理解。此外，我们还发现，短暂入侵者也能在从天然土壤样本中分离出的复杂群落中诱导稳定状态间的转换。我们的研究结果表明...