Fig 3. Sensitive T6S- individuals can dominate T6S+ competitors.

(a-b) A ball of sensitive cells (blue) is surrounded by a thick layer of T6S+ cells (red). (a) Below a critical radius, the sensitive strain ball tends to shrink to extinction; (b) above it, the ball tends to expand. This behavior is demonstrated for 1D, 2D, and 3D. (c) Heat map of the probability that a 2D sensitive domain surrounded by T6S+ competitors achieves steady growth, as a function of sensitive strain growth rate and initial radius of the sensitive domain. Dashed curve indicates predicted critical parameter values based on Eq. S1. Attack rate $\tilde{\gamma }=8$; interpolated from 80,250 simulations with timestep multiplier λ = 500. (Sensitive population either decreased or increased from near the outset of each simulation; consequently, simulations were run only until the sensitive population changed by a factor of three in either direction.) (d) Comparison of growth rate observed in single-domain sensitive 2D growth simulations (y-axis) to the values predicted for this regime in Eq 1 (x-axis). Points represent the average, by sensitive population, across all simulations with the same parameters (20 per condition; λ = 2). Color represents domain radius; black line is y = x.