Shifts and rebound in microbial community function following repeated introduction of a novel species

Natural microbial communities continually encounter novel species that may successfully establish or simply be transient, yet both outcomes can alter the resident community composition and function. Preserving natural microbial communities and innovating synthetic ones requires insight on the immediate and long-term impact of species introductions on both composition and function. For instance, it remains unclear whether there are gradual and long-term impacts from repeated introductions where the introduced species fails to establish – so-called failed invaders. To investigate the persistent impacts by failed invaders, we present an experimental test of community stability over multiple generations against repeated novel species introduction. We propagated a natural microbial community from a traditional fermented milk beverage for approximately 100 generations, with or without, repeated introduction of Escherichia coli at each transfer. Community function was determined by metabolic p..., , , # Shifts and rebound in microbial community function following repeated introduction of a novel species [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.b5mkkwhpg](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.b5mkkwhpg) ## Description of the data and file structure: ### Shifts and rebound in microbial community function following repeated introduction of a novel species DOI: 10.1111/oik.10880 **General notes:** Two experiments were run in parallel, so datasets here include: * Experiment 1 = repeated E. coli invasion (i.e., the data relevant for this manuscript). * Experiment 2 = propagation of top/bottom Mabisi [this was not used for any manuscript nor thesis chapter, concerns variable \"SPACE\"] **Bacterial community profiles:** * fall_2022_communities_v1.R (includes description of experimental variables) * output_barcoded_mabisi_2plates_0.95_clustering.csv (bionformatic pipeline output: \"abundance\",\"cluster\",\"sample\",\"total_count\") * fall_2022_META.csv (match experimental variables to each sequencing barcode:...