Quorum sensing & social evolution in microbes

It is being increasingly realised that bacteria communicate and cooperate to perform a wide range of multicellular behaviours such as dispersal, foraging, biofilm formation, chemical warfare and quorum sensing. Such behaviours are of interest to molecular microbiologists, evolutionary biologists and ecologists which has led to a large research interest in a relatively new field.... sociomicrobiology.

Our group, based at the University of Nottingham, uses microbial systems to investigate fundamental questions of evolutionary biology, such as explaining cooperation and communication and the implications for bacterial virulence and disease.

A good review of social evolution and how it applies to microbes can be found here.