Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 3DA, UK.
Bioessays. 2019 Apr;41(4):e1800247. doi: 10.1002/bies.201800247. Epub 2019 Mar 27.
For decades, myxobacteria have been spotlighted as exemplars of social "wolf-pack" predation, communally secreting antimicrobial substances into the shared public milieu. This behavior has been described as cooperative, becoming more efficient if performed by more cells. However, laboratory evidence for cooperativity is limited and of little relevance to predation in a natural setting. In contrast, there is accumulating evidence for predatory mechanisms promoting "selfish" behavior during predation, which together with conflicting definitions of cooperativity, casts doubt on whether microbial "wolf-pack" predation really is cooperative. Here, it is hypothesized that public-goods-mediated predation is not cooperative, and it is argued that a holistic model of microbial predation is needed, accounting for predator and prey relatedness, social phenotypes, spatial organization, activity/specificity/transport of secreted toxins, and prey resistance mechanisms. Filling such gaps in our knowledge is vital if the evolutionary benefits of potentially costly microbial behaviors mediated by public goods are to be properly understood.
几十年来，粘细菌一直是社会“狼群”捕食的典范，它们共同将抗微生物物质分泌到公共环境中。这种行为被描述为合作行为，如果由更多的细胞来完成，效率会更高。然而，合作的实验室证据是有限的，并且与自然环境中的捕食行为关系不大。相比之下，越来越多的证据表明捕食机制在捕食过程中促进了“自私”行为，再加上合作定义的冲突，这使得人们怀疑微生物“狼群”捕食是否真的是合作行为。在这里，假设公共物品介导的捕食不是合作的，并认为需要一个微生物捕食的整体模型，考虑到捕食者和猎物的亲缘关系、社会表型、空间组织、分泌毒素的活性/特异性/运输以及猎物的抵抗机制。如果要正确理解公共物品介导的潜在高成本微生物行为的进化优势，那么填补我们知识中的这些空白是至关重要的。
