Fig. 2

The probability that the heritability of a non-heritable microbe (\({\mathrm{V}}_{\mathrm{G}}=0\)) wrongly appears significant (α < 0.05) increases with sample size, based on a power analysis using the R-package simr (28). Results depend both on properties of the focal microbe, and on the rest of the community: colors show different abundances of the focal microbe (α) while keeping the background community abundance constant. Line type shows the heritability of the background community (solid lines: \(\frac{\upomega }{\mathrm{z}}=0.1\); dotted lines: \(\frac{\upomega }{\mathrm{z}}=0.25\)). \({\mathrm{V}}_{\mathrm{P}}={\left(\frac{1}{6}\right)}^{2}\); \(\mathrm{A}=100\); \(\mathrm{z}=100\cdot {\left(\frac{1}{6}\right)}^{2}\)