dictyNews Volume 40 Number 16

Published in

· 11 months ago

dictyNews 
Electronic Edition 
Volume 40, number 16 
June 28, 2014 

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========= 
Abstracts 
========= 
 

Fruiting bodies of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum increase 
spore transport by Drosophila. 

Jeff Smith, David C. Queller, and Joan E. Strassmann 

Department of Biology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis,  
MO 63130, USA 

 
BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014, 14:105 

BACKGROUND: Many microbial phenotypes are the product of cooperative  
interactions among cells, but their putative fitness benefits are often  
not well understood. In the cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum,  
unicellular amoebae aggregate when starved and form multicellular fruiting  
bodies in which stress-resistant spores are held aloft by dead stalk cells.  
Fruiting bodies are thought to be adaptations for dispersing spores to new  
feeding sites, but this has not been directly tested. Here we experimentally 
test whether fruiting bodies increase the rate at which spores are acquired  
by passing invertebrates. 

RESULTS: Drosophila melanogaster accumulate spores on their surfaces more  
quickly when exposed to intact fruiting bodies than when exposed to fruiting  
bodies physically disrupted to dislodge spore masses from stalks. Flies also  
ingest and excrete spores that still express a red fluorescent protein marker. 

CONCLUSIONS: Multicellular fruiting bodies created by D. discoideum increase  
the likelihood that invertebrates acquire spores that can then be transported  
to new feeding sites. These results thus support the long-hypothesized  
dispersal benefits of altruism in a model system for microbial cooperation. 

Submitted by Joan Strassmann[strassmann@wustl.edu] 
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[End dictyNews, volume 40, number 16]