Fig. 2: The spatial niche partitioning during biofilm development.

a The Bray-Curtis dissimilarity of communities between adjacent time intervals is negatively correlated with the incubation periods (two-sided Pearson r = −0.754, p = 4.69 × 10⁻¹¹). The solid line represents the linear regression, while the gray shading indicates the 95% confidence interval. b The relative abundances of the TOP 20 ASVs (covering 86.3% of total reads) in the total microbial community. Line colors correspond to different ASVs in the taxonomy legend at right. The solid line represents the average value and shaded areas indicate the standard deviation of three biological replicates. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. c The relative importance of different ecological processes in biofilm community assembly (n = 9 comparisons between three biologically replicates at each time point and three biological replicates for inoculum), including homogeneous selection (HoS), heterogeneous selection (HeS), homogeneous dispersal (HD), dispersal (DL) and drift (DR). Data are presented as mean values ± standard deviation of the relative importance of deterministic and stochastic processes. Different letters indicate significant differences (p < 0.05, one-way ANOVA). For exact p values, see Supplementary Table 1. d The relative contribution of different genera to the community succession. Columns are colored based on the taxonomy (see the taxonomy legend on the right). e FISH images of biofilm in the microfluidic chamber. The biofilm is simultaneously hybridised with the probes for Arthrobacter (ART179-Alexa546, red) and Pseudomonas (PSE227-Alexa488, green). Biofilm cells are stained with DAPI (blue). The proportion of Pseudomonas and Arthrobacter in biofilm is calculated based on the area of green and red fluorescent cells (n = 4 chips × 15 grains). Data are presented as mean values ± standard deviation. Scale bar represents 50 μm.