Philosophical Skepticism Concerning the Neutral Theory or Randomness: Misplaced or Misconceived? A Reply to Madison, "Stochasticity and Randomness in Community Assembly: Real or As-If?"

Zhanshan (Sam) Ma

doi:10.1128/msystems.01014-21

Abstract

I appreciate a recent communication from Dr. Joseph Madison (1), titled “Stochasticity and randomness in community assembly: real or as-if?,” regarding my recent article (2), titled “Cross-scale analyses of animal and human gut microbiome assemblies from metacommunity to global landscape,” both published in mSystems.

Highlights

Iappreciate a recent communication from Dr Joseph Madison [1], titled “Stochasticity and randomness in community assembly: real or as-if?,” regarding my recent article [2], titled “Cross-scale analyses of animal and human gut microbiome assemblies from metacommunity to global landscape,” both published in mSystems
Madison’s characterizations of my conclusions and/or claims, I would like to quote the last sentences in the “Importance” section of my article, to present an example of my writing style, which I believe can be characterized as cautious and was consistently followed in my paper: “The analyses were implemented by fitting the multisite neutral model and further augmented by checking false-positive and false-negative errors, respectively
Madison excerpted from my paper, and I stand by those statements, I am not very comfortable with the place those quotes were placed, the place to set a target for his follow-up comments and criticism

Summary

Introduction

Iappreciate a recent communication from Dr Joseph Madison [1], titled “Stochasticity and randomness in community assembly: real or as-if?,” regarding my recent article [2], titled “Cross-scale analyses of animal and human gut microbiome assemblies from metacommunity to global landscape,” both published in mSystems. (i) Modification to the so-termed “multisite neutral model” seems to be exaggerated since no modification was made to the model in my paper.

Results

Conclusion