Fig. 5

Impacts of initial conditions on community structure. a Representative colony patterns emerged from cells with a high, medium, and low initial density for the cases of mutualism, neutralism and competition. With the decrease of initial cell density, the general impacts of social interactions on community structure remain but their magnitudes have been reduced. b Representative community structures simulated from competing communities with different initial relative abundances. Alteration of the initial abundances resulted in dramatically different outcomes in competing communities. c Mean colony roughness of the mutualistic communities simulated in (a). d Fraction of green cells in the competing communities in (b)