Emergent predictability in microbial ecosystems
Summary
A long-standing hypothesis of microbial ecology is that simple patterns might persist despite community complexity or even emerge because of it. However, the concept of "emergent simplicity" remains partly intuitive. Here, we defined emergent predictability of microbial ecosystems based on the predictive power of coarsened descriptions that group individual microbial strains into broader classes. We used two published datasets to show that coarse descriptions became more predictive for mor
Content
# Emergent predictability in microbial ecosystems
*Published: 2026 Apr 9*
A long-standing hypothesis of microbial ecology is that simple patterns might
persist despite community complexity or even emerge because of it. However, the
concept of "emergent simplicity" remains partly intuitive. Here, we defined
emergent predictability of microbial ecosystems based on the predictive power of
coarsened descriptions that group individual microbial strains into broader
classes. We used two published datasets to show that coarse descriptions became
more predictive for more species-rich communities. This behavior was not
explained by simple averaging effects in large communities. To the contrary, our
analysis indicates that emergent predictability arises when physiological or
environmental feedback counteracts these averaging effects along certain axes of
community variation, allowing these axes to become more informative as diversity
increases.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adr1440