Departments of Biomedical Genetics, Neuroscience, and Biology, Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA.
J Neurogenet. 2020 Sep-Dec;34(3-4):389-394. doi: 10.1080/01677063.2020.1838512. Epub 2020 Nov 4.
For the first 25 years after the landmark 1974 paper that launched the field, most biologists were content to think of their subjects as solitary creatures. presented no shortage of fascinating biological problems, but some of the features that led Brenner to settle on this species-in particular, its free-living, self-fertilizing lifestyle-also seemed to reduce its potential for interesting social behavior. That perspective soon changed, with the last two decades bringing remarkable progress in identifying and understanding the complex interactions between worms. The growing appreciation that behavior can only be meaningfully understood in the context of its ecology and evolution ensures that the coming years will see similarly exciting progress.
在开创性的 1974 年论文发表后的头 25 年里，大多数生物学家满足于将他们的研究对象视为孤独的生物。秀丽隐杆线虫提出了不少引人入胜的生物学问题，但导致布伦纳选择这种物种的一些特征——尤其是其自由生活、自我受精的生活方式——似乎也降低了其产生有趣社会行为的潜力。这种观点很快就发生了变化，在过去的二十年里，人们在识别和理解线虫之间复杂的相互作用方面取得了显著的进展。越来越多的人认识到，只有在其生态和进化的背景下，才能有意义地理解行为，这确保了未来几年将取得类似令人兴奋的进展。
