Fig. 5: Surface-associated growth simulations in the presence of plasmids.

a, b Representative simulations (n = 5) of two competing bacterial strains where the red cells are potential recipients and the green cells carry a plasmid that reduces its growth rate by 5%. If a red cell receives the plasmid from a green cell, its growth rate is reduced accordingly and appears blue. We simulated biomass growth until reaching a population size of 18,000 cells in the (a) absence or (b) presence of peripheral killing. c, d Proportion of transconjugants within the total biomass as a function of the plasmid transfer probability. c Each datapoint is a measurement for an independent simulation (n = 5) and the P values are for two-sample two-sided Welch tests. Gray symbols are in the absence of phage, black symbols are in the presence of phage. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. d Each datapoint is a measurement for an independent simulation (n = 5), the lines are the running means, and the shaded regions are the standard error. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.