Noisy environments select for privatized growth in complex ecosystems

Recent observations have shown that members of microbial communities often show successive growth phases and not through simultaneous exponential growth. But it is not clear what conditions lead to such dynamic coexistence. Here we use a broad range of models to show that such successive growth is naturally selected for in ecosystems assembled in fluctuating environments. We find that ecosystems in which distinct species grow in distinct phases are more stable to fluctuations than ecosystems in which these growth phases overlap. Further, we find that these phases must correspond to roughly equal intervals when measured in terms of accumulated biomass density.