Before revision:  Our paradigm frames the ecological state  in terms of the presence or absence of an individual microbial taxonomic unit as a function of both the ecological states of its neighboring units and, departing from standard graphical model representations, the associations among the units within its neighborhood.
After revision:  Our paradigm frames the ecological state in terms of the presence or absence of an individual microbial taxonomic unit as a function of both the ecological states of its neighboring units and, in a departure from standard graphical model representations, the associations among the units within its neighborhood.