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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Dec 1.
Published in final edited form as: Phys Biol. 2012 Nov 29;9(6):065006. doi: 10.1088/1478-3975/9/6/065006

Figure 4.

Figure 4

Simplified model for phenotypic switching and survival in biofilm communities. (a) Single cells of the fungus C. neoformans phenotypically switch in biofilms between simplified adherent and non-adherent states. Dispersing non-adherent cells can result in seeding new colonies, but can also result in failure to seed and cell death. (b) Excessively rapid generation of non-adherent cells corresponds to locations above the diagonal (fS > fP) in the metronomogram, corresponding to eventual extinction of the primary biofilm. If the generation of non-adherent cells is slow compared to cell population expansion, the dynamics of the population are described by positions in the metronomogram below the diagonal (fS < fP), corresponding to expansion of the population of the primary biofilm colony.