Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: strains encoding colicin toxins. We show that provocation is typically costly in one-to-one encounters because a provoking strain receives a strong reciprocal attack compared with nonprovoking strains. By contrast, provocation can be strongly beneficial in communities including more than two toxin-producing strains, especially when the provoker is shielded from, or resistant to, its opponents' toxins. In these scenarios, we demonstrate that the benefit of provocation derives from a "divide-and-conquer" effect by which aggression-provoking toxin producers force their competitors into increased reciprocal aggression, leading to their cross-elimination. Furthermore, we show that this effect can be mimicked by using antibiotics that promote warfare among strains in a bacterial community, highlighting the potential of provocation as an antimicrobial approach.
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Awards: Characterisation of disulfide bond formation in bacterial pathogens: Unravelling the adaptation of a classical pathway into a virulence aid., G4233533781, Molecular mechanisms of resistance to Bdellovibrio in bacterial prey, The complex ecology of bacterial toxin production, G6724496859, G8638694122
OpenAlex ID: W2809782019