mSphere of Influence:If virulence is energetically costly, how can it be maintained?

Kimberly Davis works in the fieldof bacterial pathogenesis and studies heterogeneity in bacterial populations within host tissues. In this mSphere of Influencearticle, she reflectson how the paper "Stabilization of cooperative virulence by the expression of an avirulent phenotype"by M. Diard et al. (M. Diard et al., Nature 494:353-6, 2013, DOI: 10.1038/nature11913) impacted the way she thinks about bacterial population dynamics and the costs and benefitsof producing virulence factors during infection.