Bipartite almost distance-hereditary graphs

The notion of distance-heredity in graphs has been extended to construct the class of almost distance-hereditary graphs (an increase of the distance by one unit is allowed by induced subgraphs). These graphs have been characterized in terms of forbidden induced subgraphs [M. Aïder, Almost distance-hereditary graphs, Discrete Math. 242 (1–3) (2002) 1–16]. Since the distance in bipartite graphs cannot increase exactly by one unit, we have to adapt this notion to the bipartite case.In this paper, we define the class of bipartite almost distance-hereditary graphs (an increase of the distance by two is allowed by induced subgraphs) and obtain a characterization in terms of forbidden induced subgraphs.