ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank members of the UTK Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Microbiology departments for participating in the microbial macroecology seminars that inspired this synthesis. We also appreciate comments from Daniel Simberloff, Jennifer Schweitzer, and Colin Averill that substantially improved this work. KSS acknowledges funding from NSF IOS 1930829 and The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. SNK was funded by NSF DEB 1936195, Texas Ecological Laboratory and The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.