Kin discrimination between sympatric Bacillus subtilis isolates.

ABSTRACT: Kin discrimination, broadly defined as differential treatment of conspecifics according to their relatedness, could help biological systems direct cooperative behavior toward their relatives. Here we investigated the ability of the soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis to discriminate kin from nonkin in the context of swarming, a cooperative multicellular behavior. We tested a collection of sympatric conspecifics from soil in pairwise combinations and found that despite their history of coexistence, the vast majority formed distinct boundaries when the swarms met. Some swarms did merge, and most interestingly, this behavior was only seen in the most highly related strain pairs. Overall the swarm interaction phenotype strongly correlated with phylogenetic relatedness, indicative of kin discrimin

SUBMITTER: Stefanic P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4653157 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature