Microbial populations hardly ever grow logistically and never sublinearly

Abstract

We investigate the growth dynamics of microbial populations, challenging the conventional logistic model.By analyzing empirical data from various biomes, we demonstrate that microbial growth is better described by a generalized logistic model, the θ-logistic model. This accounts for different growth mechanisms and environmental fluctuations, leading to a generalized gamma distribution of abundance fluctuations. Our findings reveal that microbial growth is never sublinear, so they cannot endorse—at least in the microbial world—the recent proposal of this mechanism as a stability enhancer of highly diverse communities. These results have significant implications for understanding macroecological patterns and the stability of microbial ecosystems.We investigate the growth dynamics of microbial populations, challenging the conventional logistic model.By analyzing empirical data from various biomes, we demonstrate that microbial growth is better described by a generalized logistic model, the θ-logistic model. This accounts for different growth mechanisms and environmental fluctuations, leading to a generalized gamma distribution of abundance fluctuations. Our findings reveal that microbial growth is never sublinear, so they cannot endorse—at least in the microbial world—the recent proposal of this mechanism as a stability enhancer of highly diverse communities. These results have significant implications for understanding macroecological patterns and the stability of microbial ecosystems.