Higher-Order Interactions Dampen Pairwise Competition in the Zebrafish Gut Microbiome.

The microbial communities resident in animal intestines are composed of multiple species that together play important roles in host development, health, and disease. Due to the complexity of these communities and the difficulty of characterizing them , the determinants of microbial composition remain largely unknown. Further, it is unclear for many multispecies consortia whether their species-level makeup can be predicted based on an understanding of pairwise species interactions or whether higher-order interactions are needed to explain emergent compositions.