Figure 4.

Energy initially available for exchange among a network of 30 bacteria. Each bacterium has a quantity of energy available it wants to transfer to the others and it will be allowed to receive an amount of energy from them. These two energies are represented by different colors in the rows and columns of the grid. For example, bacterium 23 wants to share a large amount of energy with bacterium 1; on the contrary, the quantity of energy that bacterium 1 is available to transfer to bacterium 23 is much lower. Nonethelss, the two bacteria will be able to establish an effective connection, although with different intensities, because the corresponding state variables x_1,23 and x_23,1 lie above threshold η. The stars correspond to effective connections and energy exchanges.