A population-level resolution to the colonization-dispersal tradeoff

When utilizing solid substrates such as chitin, individual microbial cells must resolve the tradeoff between colonizing them for growth and dispersing from them to explore new nutrient patches. As such, we studied the strategies of chitin utilization of two different bacterial species: one favoring attachment of cells to particles and another, detachment from them. Careful mechanistic analyses of these two strategies revealed that even though individual cells were subject to the aforementioned tradeoff, bacterial populations could circumvent it through their production of localized public goods. We speculate on the ecological forces that may tune bacterial strategies for solid substrate utilization.