Reviewer #2 (Public review): Linking complex microbial interactions and dysbiosis through a disordered Lotka–Volterra model

This important study shows how the relative importance of inter-species interactions in microbiomes can be inferred from empirical species abundance data.The methods based on statistical physics of disordered systems are compelling and rigorous, and allow for distinguishing healthy and non-healthy human gut microbiomes via differences in their inter-species interaction patterns.This work should be of broad interest to researchers in microbial ecology and theoretical biophysics.