Range expansion and localization in patchy landscapes

Identifying ecological processes governing the spatial distribution and assembly of microbial populations and communities is an ongoing challenge in microbial ecology. Linking colonization dynamics of traveling bacterial waves preceding stationary population development, including biofilm formation, is one microbial system of significant importance. How and where stationary populations are distributed across the landscape following range expansion is impacted by cell transitions in lifestyle from planktonic –foraging up chemical gradients– to sessile –surface attachment and recruitment– which is influenced by environmental cues and spatial confinement. In extreme cases of confinement, attachment events can fragment the landscape localizing otherwise planktonic chemotactic bacterial waves forcing an early onset to stationary development. Coupling microfluidics experiments of bacterial colonization dynamics in patchy landscapes with a simple lattice model, this work aims to connect key processes at play in planktonic-to-sessile transitions to understand observed patterns in metapopulation distribution including localization events.