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Full-Text Articles in Biology
Programmed Allee Effect In Bacteria Causes A Tradeoff Between Population Spread And Survival, Robert P. Smith, Cheemang Tan, Jaydeep K. Srimani, Anand Pai, Katherine A. Riccione, Hao Song, Lingchong You
Programmed Allee Effect In Bacteria Causes A Tradeoff Between Population Spread And Survival, Robert P. Smith, Cheemang Tan, Jaydeep K. Srimani, Anand Pai, Katherine A. Riccione, Hao Song, Lingchong You
Biology Faculty Articles
Dispersal is necessary for spread into new habitats, but it has also been shown to inhibit spread. Theoretical studies have suggested that the presence of a strong Allee effect may account for these counterintuitive observations. Experimental demonstration of this notion is lacking due to the difficulty in quantitative analysis of such phenomena in a natural setting. We engineered Escherichia coli to exhibit a strong Allee effect and examined how the Allee effect would affect the spread of the engineered bacteria. We showed that the Allee effect led to a biphasic dependence of bacterial spread on the dispersal rate: spread is …