Bacterial social interactions and the emergence of community-intrinsic properties

Bacterial communities are dominated and shaped by social interactions, which facilitate the emergence of properties observed only in the community setting. Such community-intrinsic properties impact not only the phenotypes of cells in a community, but also community composition and function, and are thus likely to affect a potential host. Studying community-intrinsic properties is, therefore, important for furthering our understanding of clinical, applied and environmental microbiology. Here, we provide recent examples of research investigating community-intrinsic properties, focusing mainly on community composition and interactions in multispecies biofilms. We hereby wish to emphasize the importance of studying social interactions in settings where community-intrinsic properties are likely to emerge.