FIG 2.

Dominance and tolerance within pneumococcal biofilm consortia. S. pneumoniae S6B (3875), S19F (5131), or S23F (8064) was inoculated alone or coinoculated with the indicated strain into 24-well plates and incubated for 8 h, after which biofilms were harvested and DNA was extracted. Serotype-specific qPCRs targeting serotype 6B (A), serotype 23F (B), or serotype 19F (C) were used to quantify the specific bacterial load of each strain. The error bars reflect the standard errors of the means and were calculated using data from three independent experiments. Numbers inside and above the bars are medians. *, statistically significant reduction (P < 0.05) in biomass in comparison to biomass of the strain inoculated alone. (D) The observed proportion was compared to the null proportion of 0.5, as the same amounts of each strain were coinoculated together. Shown are the average proportions obtained from three independent experiments. ◆, statistically different (P < 0.05) proportion of strains were incubated together.