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Title: Are fluctuating phases in microbial microcosms the chaotic phase of theory?
Plain: Laboratory communities of bacteria change from stable coexistence to lasting population swings as more species are added or as they interact more strongly, as random-interaction models predict. It remains to be shown that the experimental swings are the same phase the theory describes, rather than a different effect.
Precise: Microcosm experiments that vary species-pool size $S$ and effective interaction strength find stable full coexistence, stable partial coexistence and persistent fluctuations, ordered as in random Lotka-Volterra theory. Determine whether the fluctuating experimental state shows the signatures of the theoretical chaotic phase: positive Lyapunov exponent from time series, self-consistent noise statistics of abundances, and phase-boundary location $\sigma_c(\gamma)$ set by measured interaction statistics. An answer is a quantitative match or mismatch with these predictions.
Settled by: Long, densely sampled time series of replicated microcosms with measured pairwise interaction statistics, compared with mean-field predictions for the boundary and fluctuation statistics.
Kind: well-posed
Answer type: yes-no
References: (empty)
Literature status: open
Status note: 2022 microcosm experiments mapped the three phases with the order predicted by random-interaction theory.
Posed since: (empty)