It remains unclear why bacterial diversity was formed and maintained in oligotrophic environment (OE) with low-dose X-ray radiation (LDXR) due to violation of the competitive exclusion principle in ecology. Based on microbial ecology, bioinformatics, cybernetics, experimental phenomena and data, a new hypothesis was proposed to elucidate information sharing mechanisms causingformation and maintenance of bacterial diversity in OE with LDXR. According to hypothesis, a valid cellular automata (CA) model was developed, the CA simulation sufficiently proved that as the bacterial individuals conduct cooperation to share information of substrate positions with each other selflessly, it can effectively increase the survival probabilities of all bacterial species, alleviate interspecific competition, and prevent any bacterial species from being dominant to be beneficial to the coexistence of most species, promoting bacterial diversity during spatiotemporal community succession in OE with LDXR. The results of CA simulation sufficiently confirm the proposed hypothesis andare highly similar to the observed phenomena and data in the experiments. This study could not only lay the theoretical foundation for understanding of the key role of information sharing plays in formation and maintenance of bacterial diversity but also offer effective guidance for bacterial prevention and control as well as other ecological engineering applications.

No abstract