Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS - University of Paris VII, France.
BMC Biol. 2012 Jun 25;10:59. doi: 10.1186/1741-7007-10-59.
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a major model organism in laboratory biology. Very little is known, however, about its ecology, including where it proliferates. In the past, C. elegans was mainly isolated from human-made compost heaps, where it was overwhelmingly found in the non-feeding dauer diapause stage.
C. elegans and C. briggsae were found in large, proliferating populations in rotting plant material (fruits and stems) in several locations in mainland France. Both species were found to co-occur in samples isolated from a given plant species. Population counts spanned a range from one to more than 10,000 Caenorhabditis individuals on a single fruit or stem. Some populations with an intermediate census size (10 to 1,000) contained no dauer larvae at all, whereas larger populations always included some larvae in the pre-dauer or dauer stages. We report on associated micro-organisms, including pathogens. We systematically sampled a spatio-temporally structured set of rotting apples in an apple orchard in Orsay over four years. C. elegans and C. briggsae were abundantly found every year, but their temporal distributions did not coincide. C. briggsae was found alone in summer, whereas both species co-occurred in early fall and C. elegans was found alone in late fall. Competition experiments in the laboratory at different temperatures show that C. briggsae out-competes C. elegans at high temperatures, whereas C. elegans out-competes C. briggsae at lower temperatures.
C. elegans and C. briggsae proliferate in the same rotting vegetal substrates. In contrast to previous surveys of populations in compost heaps, we found fully proliferating populations with no dauer larvae. The temporal sharing of the habitat by the two species coincides with their temperature preference in the laboratory, with C. briggsae populations growing faster than C. elegans at higher temperatures, and vice at lower temperatures.
秀丽隐杆线虫是实验室生物学中的主要模式生物。然而，人们对其生态学知之甚少，包括它在哪里繁殖。过去，秀丽隐杆线虫主要从人造堆肥堆中分离出来，在那里它主要处于非摄食 dauer 滞育阶段。
在法国大陆的几个地点，在腐烂的植物材料（果实和茎）中发现了大量繁殖的秀丽隐杆线虫和 C. briggsae 种群。在从给定植物物种分离的样本中发现了这两个物种的共存。种群数量从单个果实或茎上的一个到超过 10000 个秀丽隐杆线虫个体不等。一些中等种群数量（10 到 1000）根本没有 dauer 幼虫，而较大的种群总是包括一些处于 pre-dauer 或 dauer 阶段的幼虫。我们报告了相关的微生物，包括病原体。我们系统地在奥赛的一个苹果园中，在四年内对腐烂的苹果进行了时空结构采样。每年都大量发现秀丽隐杆线虫和 C. briggsae，但它们的时间分布并不一致。C. briggsae 仅在夏季发现，而这两个物种在初秋共存，而秀丽隐杆线虫仅在深秋发现。在不同温度下的实验室竞争实验表明，C. briggsae 在高温下比 C. elegans 更具竞争力，而 C. elegans 在较低温度下比 C. briggsae 更具竞争力。
秀丽隐杆线虫和 C. briggsae 在相同的腐烂植物基质中繁殖。与先前对堆肥堆中种群的调查不同，我们发现了没有 dauer 幼虫的完全繁殖种群。这两个物种在栖息地的时间共享与它们在实验室中的温度偏好一致，C. briggsae 种群在较高温度下比 C. elegans 生长得更快，而在较低温度下则相反。
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