Filamentous fungi contribute to ecosystem and human-induced processes such as primary production, bioremediation, biogeochemical cycling and biocontrol. Predicting the dynamics of fungal communities can hence improve our forecasts of ecological processes which depend on fungal community structure. In this work, we aimed to develop simple theoretical models of fungal interactions with ordinary and partial differential equations, and to validate model predictions against community dynamics of a three species empirical system. We found that space is an important factor for the prediction of community dynamics, since the performance was poor for models of ordinary differential equations assuming well-mixed nutrient substrate. The models of partial differential equations could satisfactorily predict the dynamics of a single species, but exhibited limitations which prevented the prediction of empirical community dynamics. One such limitation is the arbitrary choice of a threshold local density above which a fungal mycelium is considered present in the model. In conclusion, spatially explicit simulation models, able to incorporate different factors influencing interaction outcomes and hence dynamics, appear as a more promising direction towards prediction of fungal community dynamics.

中文翻译：

---

为空间竞争建立模型：预测社区动态

丝状真菌有助于生态系统和人类诱导的过程，例如初级生产，生物修复，生物地球化学循环和生物防治。因此，预测真菌群落的动态可以改善我们对取决于真菌群落结构的生态过程的预测。在这项工作中，我们旨在开发与常微分方程和偏微分方程的真菌相互作用的简单理论模型，并针对三种物种经验系统的群落动态验证模型预测。我们发现空间是预测社区动态的重要因素，因为对于假设营养成分充分混合的常微分方程模型，其性能较差。偏微分方程模型可以令人满意地预测单个物种的动力学，但显示出局限性，无法预测经验性社区动态。这样的限制之一是任意选择阈值局部密度，在该阈值局部密度之上，认为模型中存在真菌菌丝体。总之，能够纳入影响交互结果并因此影响动力学的不同因素的空间显式模拟模型，似乎是预测真菌群落动态的更有希望的方向。