Small Things Considered

If You Were a Carpenter Ant

by Roberto | If you were a Carpenter ant (Camponotus leonardi ) in a rainforest in Thailand, your nest would be built high atop the canopy and, as a worker, you would seldom venture down to the ground during your foraging trips. Somehow, perhaps for the presence of eerie-looking ant graveyards, you are hesitant to go along the path on the forest floor... Read more →

Fine Reading: Killing by Type VI Secretion...

by Elio | A recent paper by McNally et al. entitled: 'Killing by Type VI secretion drives genetic phase se­pa­ra­tion and correlates with increased cooperation' begins with the felicitous paragraph below. I think that it encapsulates the main features of the paradigm shift that has occurred recently, from bac­te­ria as lone... Read more →

Bottoms up: Nefarious Nematodes and Red Rumps

by Michael Haar | Deep in the Amazon, a super­villain of mi­cro­sco­pic pro­por­tions strikes fear into the ganglion of honest tree-dwelling ants in every canopy. Myr­me­co­ne­ma neo­tro­pi­cum is a pa­ra­si­tic ne­ma­tode, one of the count­less species in the phylum Ne­ma­to­da that exist in nearly every lo­cation on Earth. For many, pa­ra­si­tism is a topic that can... Read more →

Let's eat! Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus couples predation with replication

by Jacky Lu | Predation in the animal world revolves around the senses. Anglerfish use light to lure in prey, sharks can smell the tiniest drop of blood in the ocean, bats rely on their keen sense of hearing to catch a passing insect. Predators not only have to find their prey, but they must also make the decision to pursue and capture them. Such dynamics between predator and prey exist in the macroscopic world of animals, but do they exist in the microbial world as well? Read more →

A Snippet: Who Invented Agriculture, the Ants or the Bees?

by Elio | Agriculture was invented at the time of the dinosaurs, long before there was anything resembling a primate on earth. Take the example of the leaf cutting ants. For about 50 million years, they have been harvesting plant material, bringing it to their nest, chewing it up, and using the chewate to grow fungi, which is what they eat... Read more →

Kiss and Make Up: Myxococcus xanthus demonstrates bacterial cooperation

by Ada Hagan | If there's a hot topic in microbiology, it's bacterial interaction and communication. Bacteria "talk" to each other using a complex chemical language we are only just beginning to understand. Quorum sensing allows communication between spatially separated cells of similar species. Functioning similarly, bacteriocins warn non-immune bacteria... Read more →

The Attraction of Magnetotactic Bacteria

by Daniel P. Haeusser | Regular readers of Small Things Considered may recall our mention of the magnetotactic bacteria, organisms that can sense the Earth's magnetic field to orient themselves and distinguish up from down. The magnetotactic bacteria vary greatly in morphology, metabolism, and phylogeny, but they all share a little tool that permits the magnetic sensing underlying their coordinated movement (magnetotaxis). Read more →

‘Tis the Season to be Sweating

by Elio | This is the time of the year of increased physical activity when we pay special attention to certain parts of the body, including the armpit. As is usually the case, our microbiota is involved because the odor associated with sweating is produced by microbial activity. The main culprits are skin… Read more →

An Evolutionary Tale of Zombie Ants and Fungal Villains & Knights

by Gemma Reguera | In a recent post I shared with you some amazing things I had learnt about coprophilous (‘dung-loving’) fungi that spit their spores like pros. What I did not tell you then is that my six-year-old son also fell in love with the spitting fungi (dung + spit = child’s interest!)… Read more →

It’s Raining Viruses!

by Merry Youle | It’s true! Each year it rains viruses, more than a trillion of them per acre over thousands of forested acres in the USA. This is the work of the airborne arm of the USDA Forest Service, part of their efforts to reduce the devastation to hardwood forests caused by the imported gypsy moth… Read more →