Data for: Emergent coexistence in multispecies microbial communities

Understanding the mechanisms that maintain microbial biodiversity is a
critical aspiration in ecology. Past work on microbial coexistence has
largely focused on species pairs, but it is unclear whether pairwise
coexistence in isolation is required for coexistence in a multispecies
community. To address this question, we conducted hundreds of pairwise
competition experiments among the stably coexisting members of 12
different enrichment communities in vitro. To determine the outcomes of
these experiments, we developed an automated image analysis pipeline to
quantify species abundances. We found that competitive exclusion was the
most common outcome, and it was strongly hierarchical and transitive.
Because many species that coexist within a stable multispecies community
fail to coexist in pairwise co-culture under identical conditions, we
concluded that multispecies coexistence is an emergent phenomenon. This
work highlights the importance of community context for understanding the
origins of coexistence in complex ecosystems.