Stochastic assembly influences functional potential, redundancy, and trait patterns in bacterial communities (microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com)

• Stochastic assembly drives functional trait distribution in bacterial communities, with redundancy patterns reflecting total genome pool.
• 'Functional dispersal limitation' for cellobiose uptake rejected; communities with required genes did not metabolize cellobiose.
• Category-resolved functional dissimilarity patterns conserved across GTDB null model, highlighting habitat-driven convergence.

"A study using gene- and genome-resolved metagenomics on twenty parallel lake-water bacterial communities found that stochastic assembly shapes functional trait distribution and redundancy. The concept of 'functional dispersal limitation' for cellobiose uptake was rejected as communities with the necessary genes did not utilize cellobiose. Functional redundancy varied by category and was lower within communities than between them. Patterns of functional dissimilarity were conserved across diversity scales and even across 28,000 genomes from the Genome Taxonomy Database. The authors conclude that using null models is important for interpreting functional redundancy."