Fig. 3

Increased migration rate leads to altered population dynamics and ultimately to synchronization. a Schematic illustration of the growth-migration-dilution scheme employed in the experiments with two connected bacterial populations. The two patches A (red box) and B (blue box) correspond to two distinct co-cultures of AmpR and ChlR cells. The migration rate is denoted by m. b The fraction (out of six replicates) of connected pairs of co-cultures synchronized in phase as a function of the migration rate in benign environmental conditions. c–e Representative time series for the ratio of AmpR cells to ChlR cells in patches A (red data series) and B (blue data series) for m = 0 (c), m = 0.1 (d), and m = 0.2 (e), showing asynchronous period-3 oscillations, disturbed oscillations with various periods and synchronous period-3 oscillations, respectively. In b–e, the experimental condition corresponds to 10 μg/ml of ampicillin and 8 μg/ml of chloramphenicol