DOI: 10.5061/dryad.18931zd6m
title: Selection on Sporulation Strategies in a Metapopulation Can Lead to Coexistence

description: In constant environments the coexistence of similar species or genotypes
 is generally limited. In a metapopulation context, however, types that
 utilize the same resource but are distributed along a
 competition-colonization trade-off, can coexist. Much thought in this area
 focuses on a generic trade-off between within-deme competitive ability and
 between-deme dispersal ability. We point out that the sporulation program
 in yeasts and other microbes can create a natural trade-off such that
 strains which initiate sporulation at higher rates suffer in terms of
 within-deme competition but benefit in terms of between deme dispersal. We
 develop metapopulation models where the within-deme behavior follows
 chemostat dynamics. We first show that the rate of sporulation determines
 the colonization ability of the strain, with colonization ability
 increasing with sporulation rate up to a point. Metapopulation stability
 of a single strain exists in a defined range of sporulation rates. We then
 use pairwise invasability plots to show that coexistence of strains with
 different sporulation rates generally occurs, but that the set of
 sporulation rates that can potentially coexist is smaller than the set
 that allows for stable metapopulations. We extend our pairwise results to
 show how a continuous set of strains can coexist and verify our
 conclusions with numerical calculations and stochastic simulations. Our
 results show that stable variation in sporulation rates is expected under
 a wide range of ecological conditions.   --
description: Data for this paper consist of numerical and stochastic
 simulations performed using Mathematica and the Rust programming language.
 Some data files were stored as .csv files to transfer between simulation
 platforms. 
description: # Selection on sporulation strategies in a metapopulation can lead to
 coexistence
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.18931zd6m](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.18931zd6m) ## Description of the data and file structure Numerical calculations were performed using Wolfram Mathematica.  Stochastic simulations were performed in both Wolfram Mathematica and using the Rust programing language.   ### Files and variables 1. pip-fitness.csv is a comma separated value file that includes output from the Rust code. It has 3 columns, rho1, rho2, and value. Rho1 is the resident sporulation rate (cells/unit time), rho2 is the mutant sporulation rate (cells/unit time), and value is the simulated result for the growth factor of the mutant population. Values greater than 1 indicate that the mutant increases numerically over one generation when starting from a single mutant patch, on average. Values less than 1 indicate that fewer than 1 patch, on average, is present at the next timestep. ## Code/software Files are available on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14042760 1. FigureCodeAndSupplementaryCalculations.nb is the main Mathematica notebook. This contains code to calculate within patch equilibrium values and to determine invasion of new/mutant sporulation strategies. Data from the Rust program is loaded in this notebook and used to make figures that combine Rust output and Mathematica calculations. 2. main.rs is the main Rust code file. This includes code to run the simulations and export data to a .csv file 3. Cargo.toml is an ancillary Rust file that is necessary to run the code. The Mathematica code requires users to have and install Wolfram Mathematica. The Rust code requires users to have a working Rust environment.  ## Access information Other publicly accessible locations of the data: * N/A Data was derived from the following sources: * N/A