In the age of internet memes spread around the world in very short time, it has been already proved that, in several cases, the mechanism of propagation is very similar to a flu infection. Although the mechanism of homeorhesis observed in these synthetic ecosystems remains to be elucidated, it is clear that it must emerge from the ways each species controls its own internal states, with respect to a diverse set of environmental conditions and ecological interactions. Homeorhesis was also observed for certain phenotypic variables, such as partitioning of the ciliates into distinct size classes and clumping of the algae. The distribution of abundance trajectories rapidly converged to a nearly deterministic path, with small fluctuations, despite variations in initial conditions, environmental perturbations, and intrinsic noise, indicative of homeorhesis. To directly study succession in these ecosystems, we deliberately varied the initial cell abundances over replicates and quantified the ensuing dynamics. Here, we present simplified, two-species microbial ecosystems consisting of algae and ciliates, imaged in toto at single-cell resolution with fluorescence microscopy over a period of 1 to 2 weeks. We previously found that population dynamics in carefully controlled, replicated synthetic microbial ecosystems were strongly deterministic over several months. Direct quantitation of the degree of contingency in succession requires chronological study of replicate ecosystems. The dynamics of ecological change following a major perturbation, known as succession, are influenced by random processes.
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