It means considering several things together rather than one in isolation: which species are present and how abundant they are, how diverse and rich the community is, what the community is functionally capable of, and markers that describe the gut environment itself. Looking at any one of those alone can be misleading, in the same way a single tree tells you little about the health of a forest. Reading them together is what turns a set of measurements into something a practitioner can work with.
What does it mean to look at the microbiome as an ecosystem?
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Written by Hana