Biotic resistance predictably shifts microbial invasion regimes

Invading new territory is a central aspect of the microbial lifestyle. However, invading microbes rarely find novel territories uninhabited; resident microbes can interact with the newcomers and, in many cases, impede their invasion – an effect known as ‘biotic resistance’. Accordingly, invasions are shaped by the interplay between dispersal and resistance. However, these two factors are difficult to disentangle or manipulate in natural systems, making their interplay challenging to understand. To address this challenge, we track microbial invasions in the lab over space and time – first in a model system of two interacting microbes, then in a multi-strain system involving a pathogen invading resident communities. In the presence of biotic resistance, we observe three qualitatively different invasion regimes: ‘consistent’, ‘pulsed’, and ‘pinned’, where, in the third regime, strong biotic resistance stalls the invasion entirely despite ongoing invader dispersal. These rich invasion dynamics could be qualitatively predicted with a simple, parameter-free framework that ignores individual species interactions, even for rather complex communities. Moreover, we show that this simple framework could accurately predict simulated invasions from different mechanistic models, indicating its broad applicability. Our work offers an understanding of how biotic resistance impacts invasions and introduces a predictive tool to identify invasion-resistant communities.