ABSTRACT
Bacteria are efficient colonizers of a wide range of secluded micro-habitats, such as soil pores1–3, skin follicles4, dental cavities5,6 or crypts in gut-like environments7–9. Although numerous factors promoting or obstructing stable colonization have been identified10–14, we currently lack systematic approaches to explore how population stability and resilience depend on the scale of the micro-habitat. Using a microfluidic device to grow bacteria in crypt-like incubation chambers of systematically varied lengths, we found that the incubation scale can sensitively tune bacterial colonization success and resistance against invaders. Small crypts are un-colonizable, intermediately sized crypts can stably support dilute populations, while beyond a second critical lengthscale, populations phase-separate into a dilute and a jammed region. We demonstrate that the jammed state confers extreme colonization resistance, even if the resident strain is suppressed by an antibiotic. Combined with a flexible biophysical model, we show that scale acts as an environmental filter that can be tuned via the competition between growth and collective cell motion. More broadly, our observations underscore that scale can profoundly bias experimental outcomes in microbial ecology15–18. Systematic, flow-adjustable lengthscale variations may serve as a promising strategy to elucidate further scale-sensitive tipping points19–21 and to rationally modulate the stability and resilience of microbial colonizers22.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.