A simple model provides an accessible framework to infer macroscopic parameters of effective resource competition from longitudinal studies of microbial communities.

Intraspecific predator interference enables a wide range of consumer species to coexist with a limited variety of resources, explaining the paradox of the plankton and species diversity patterns across ecosystems.

Multistability and regime shifts are common and species diversity is high in microbial communities when nutrient supplies are balanced and competing species have different stoichiometries of essential nutrients.

There are regularities in how specific nutrients combine together to shape the taxonomic composition of self-assembled communities, with some types of nutrients dominating other types.

Analytical and numerical analyses reveal that the number of coexisting species exceeds the number of resource only for the structurally unstable case of linear tradeoff.

Laboratory experiments using a microbial community and mathematical modeling reveal how environmental disturbances can predictably alter the diversity and composition of an ecosystem.

Rapidly diversifying biotic interactions decouple the dynamics of nearly identical strains.

A novel theory demonstrates how variation in the thermal responses of microbial populations can alter coexistance and thus explain patterns of richness across thermal gradients.

With mathematical modeling being an important source of insight for microbial communities, we may need to move beyond commonly-used pairwise models that do not capture microbial interactions.

In a consumer-resource model obeying the physical requirement of flux conservation, metabolic competition between microbes yields consortia of cell types that collectively resist invasion via optimal use of resources.