(a) Phylogenetic tree of the 12-member synthetic ecology spanning the major phyla in the gut microbiome including Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes and Proteobacteria. Phylogenetic analysis was performed using a concatenated alignment of single-copy marker genes obtained via Phylosift(Darling et al, 2014). Maximum likelihood trees were generated using default options. The scale bar represents the number of substitutions per site in the alignment. 