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ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE

Handling unpredictable ecosystems

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 2, pages 1207–1208 (2018)Cite this article

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Predicting and steering the fate of antibiotic resistance requires developing ecology- and evolution-aware strategies.

Writing in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Beardmore et al.3 suggest that this unpredictability may be because in their natural environment, microbial species do not exist in isolation, but are embedded within complex communities made up of many different species in a constantly changing environment. Rather than thinking about competition between strains that are identical except for their resistance to the antibiotic, the authors argue that it is key to consider the ecological dynamics of resistant and sensitive species that differ along other dimensions as well.

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Fig. 1: Responses to antibiotic addition and removal.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Rene Niehus

  2. Department of Fundamental Microbiology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Sara Mitri

Authors
  1. Rene Niehus
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  2. Sara Mitri
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Correspondence to Sara Mitri.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Niehus, R., Mitri, S. Handling unpredictable ecosystems. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 1207–1208 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0619-y

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