Microbiology Commons^™

Is There Specificity In A Defensive Mutualism Against Soil Versus Lab Nematodes, Dictyostelium Discoideum Farmers And Their Bacteria?, Boahemaa Adu-Oppong,, David C. Queller, Joan E. Strassmann

Biology Faculty Publications & Presentations

Background: The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum is a soil-dwelling microbe, which lives most of its life cycle in the vegetative stage as a predator of bacteria and as prey for nematodes. When bacteria are sparse, amoebae aggregate into a multicellular fruiting body. Some clones of D. discoideum have agriculture (Brock et al., 2011). They carry bacteria through the social stage, eat them prudently, and use some bacteria as defence against non-farming D. discoideum competitors. Caenorhabditis elegans preys on D. discoideum in the laboratory but does not encounter it in nature because C. elegans lives on rotten fruit. The nematode …