Multi-organism systems
Systems composed of multiple organisms whose interactions shape shared processes, from microbial communities to multispecies ecosystems.
Ecological interaction: A relationship between organisms that affects their survival, reproduction, or distribution. Competition, predation, and cooperation are basic links through which organisms shape shared processes.
Ecological community: Assemblage of populations of different species living and interacting in a place. Communities are the interacting living components of many multi-organism systems.
Human microbiome: The microorganisms living in and on the human body, together with their genetic material and functions. Host-associated microbial communities can influence digestion, immunity, and disease risk.
Emergent property: A system-level feature arising from interactions among its components and not attributable to any one component alone. Collective system behavior can arise from many organisms acting through local interactions.
Community assembly: The processes determining which species colonize and persist in a community. Assembly rules help explain how interactions and history produce different system compositions.
Food web: A network of feeding relationships among organisms in an ecosystem. Energy and nutrients move through interconnected feeding relationships rather than isolated pairs.
Population ecology: The study of changes in the size, structure, and distribution of populations. Population-level changes determine which organisms and abundances enter system interactions.
Gut microbiota: The community of microorganisms inhabiting the gastrointestinal tract. Its interactions with the host and one another affect nutrient processing and health.
Ecosystem stability: The capacity of an ecosystem to persist or recover under disturbance. Interaction patterns can influence whether shared processes persist through environmental change.
Metacommunity: A set of local communities linked by the dispersal of multiple species. Dispersal connects local systems, complicating predictions based only on local interactions.