Dynamically induced spatial segregation in multispecies bacterial bioconvection

Active matter, from motile bacteria to animals, can exhibit striking collective and coherent behavior. Despite significant advances in understanding the behavior of homogeneous systems, little is known about the self-organization and dynamics of heterogeneous active matter, such as complex and diverse bacterial communities. Under oxygen gradients, many bacterial species swim towards air-liquid interfaces in auto-organized, directional bioconvective flows, whose spatial scales exceed the cell size by orders of magnitude. Here we show that multispecies bacterial suspensions undergoing oxytactic-driven bioconvection exhibit dynamically driven spatial segregation, despite the enhanced mixing of bioconvective flows, and the fact that these species coexist in their natural habitat. Segregation is observed as patterns of spatially interlocked domains, with local dominance of one of the constituent species in the suspension. Our findings suggest that segregation mechanisms involve minimization ..., , , # Dynamically induced spatial segregation in multispecies bacterial bioconvection

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5x69p8ddf](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5x69p8ddf)

## Description of the data and file structure

Deposited data includes the following data files used to generate different figures in the main text, with their respective description. Files of Word document type .docx and Excel files .xlsx.

### Files and variables

#### File: Data\_Fig\_4a\_Characterization\_of\_interspecies\_interactions\_during\_bioconvection.docx

**Description:** Each table corresponds to the indicated binary bacterial suspension. Replicates correspond to plated replicates for CFUs counting, and experiments are independent. The upper table contains the colony forming units (CFU) counted on agar plates for a diluted binary suspension at time 0 and 1 hours, relative to the time when species were mixed. The concentration of mixtures at time 0 hours was calculated from the single species cultures that wer...