Slower-growing species promote interspecific cooperation and coexistence under acid stress through cross-feeding
Hui Liao, Liming Wu, Yi Luo, Hussain Asif, Xinlei Huang, Xiaole Xia · 2025
Read Slower-growing species promote interspecific cooperation and coexistence under acid stress through cross-feeding by Hui Liao, Liming Wu, Yi Luo, Hussain Asif, Xinlei Huang, Xiaole Xia (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12816087.txt.
Description
Hui Liao and five colleagues present a 2025 microbiology study on a surprising route to harmony between species: stress. In acid conditions, the authors found, slower-growing microbes gain the upper hand, and groups shift from rivalry toward working together. The team combined experiments on bacterial pairs and bacteria-fungus pairs with a resource-consumer math model.
Under rising acid stress, living side by side organized itself over centimeter scales, set by trade-offs between growth speed and acid tolerance. Slow growers excreted goods that partners could feed on, a cross-feeding that deepened under stress. The pattern held even between distant relatives with matching traits. The work offers a way to predict how stressed ecosystems, from soils to guts, reorganize.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Hui Liao, Liming Wu, Yi Luo, Hussain Asif, Xinlei Huang, Xiaole Xia |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 113 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |