Shearing in flow environment promotes evolution of social behavior in microbial populations

Abstract

It is advantageous for microbes to form social aggregates when they commonly benefit 7 from secreting a public good. However, cooperating microbial groups can be evolutionarily 8 unstable, since a cheating strain that does not secrete the public good can reproduce quicker and 9 take over. Here we study the effects of fluid advection patterns on group reproduction as a 10 mechanism to enable or enhance social behavior in microbial populations. We use a realistic