Travelling waves of invasion in microbial communities with phenotypic switching
Diego Manso Anda, Pierre A. Haas
TLDR
Microbial phenotypic switching surprisingly doesn't alter competitor invasion speed but can accelerate the switching population's own invasion, suggesting an offensive persistence strategy.
Key contributions
- Investigated the effect of phenotypic switching on spatial competition in microbial communities.
- Found that phenotypic switching does not impact the speed of a competitor's invading wave.
- Discovered that phenotypic switching can accelerate the invasion wave of the switching population itself.
- Suggests bacterial persistence acts as an offensive, rather than solely defensive, ecological strategy.
Why it matters
This paper redefines bacterial persistence, showing it's not just defensive but can accelerate invasion. This offers crucial new insights into microbial ecological strategies and spatial competition, potentially informing novel population management.
Original Abstract
Complex microbial habitats see the spatial competition of different clonal bacterial populations that switch between different phenotypes. Here, we determine the effect of this subpopulation structure on the invasion of one species by another in a minimal model of two competing species: one species switches, both stochastically and in response to its competitor, to a persister phenotype resilient to competition. Surprisingly, our combined analytical and numerical results show that this phenotypic switching has no effect on the speed of the travelling wave by which the competitors invade the first population. Conversely, we discover that phenotypic switching can speed up the wave by which this population invades their competitors. Our results thus suggest, counterintuitively, that bacterial persistence can be an offensive, rather than defensive ecological strategy.
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