Generally this is how natural selection works, incrementally over long time scales. Just a small bias for survival is enough to get the optimization process to

Generally this is how natural selection works, incrementally over long time scales. Just a small bias for survival is enough to get the optimization process to work over the long time scale. One other thing to think about, one strategy that bacteria have been observed to employ is that a colony can clump together and develop a kind of film that protects the entire colony from some chemical that would be fatal to any one individual cell. This ability is greatly enhanced by individuals having a greater tolerance to low concentrations and being able to signal to the colony to begin the defensive response. Bacterial colonies have also been recently shown to communicate amongst the individuals. So, the headline could be reasonably construed as accurate, IMO.