"The world’s only known vertebrate-microbe symbiosis"
May 24, 2018 7:14 AM   Subscribe

Algae trapped inside salamander cells do not appear to be able to generate enough oxygen to meet the dual demand from self and salamander. Compounding the trouble, being inside an animal also tends to obscure the sun.
An article from Jennifer Frazer's Artful Amoeba blog on the Scientific American site (previously).
posted by inconstant (15 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
The world’s only known vertebrate-microbe symbiosis? I and my intestinal flora beg to differ.
posted by No Robots at 7:54 AM on May 24, 2018 [10 favorites]


That reminds me of "Brain Plague" — at one point she closes her eyes to punish the microbes for misbehavior.

(TIL it's part of a series?!)
posted by crysflame at 8:07 AM on May 24, 2018


While the title phrase may be technically incorrect, the situation here strikes this non-biologist as a very unusual symbiosis. Your intestinal flora are prokaryotes. The mitochondria and chloroplasts inside eukaryotic cells started out as prokaryotes. This is an example where a eukaryotic cell is living inside another eukaryotic cell. I've never heard of that before.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:10 AM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


being inside an animal also tends to obscure the sun

"Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
posted by moonmilk at 8:18 AM on May 24, 2018 [7 favorites]


Echoing Jpfed: The slightly off "vertebrate-microbe" phrase comes from the article. Wikipedia puts it more accurately as the only known example an intracellular endosymbiont microbe in vertebrates.
posted by little onion at 8:39 AM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


But so it's a nested version of endosymbiosis. Meaning we can hope that some day it will evolve that chloroplasts exist inside algal cells, those algae inside salamanders, those salamanders inside elephants.
posted by little onion at 8:43 AM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


Interesting. There's parasitism and symbiosis, but this is a third mode, an anti-parasitism, with the host creature receiving all the benefits.
posted by Ned G at 9:42 AM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Commensalism. To be ecologically technical, "symbiosis" is the broad term for mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism.
posted by little onion at 9:56 AM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


I realize the argument of the post is that the algae are benefiting reproductively, but if they weren't -- i.e., if they only experienced the negative effects of the symbiosis -- then is there a term for that kind of "reverse parasitism" (host organism benefits, non-host/indwelling organism is [specifically] harmed)?
posted by inconstant at 10:04 AM on May 24, 2018


Lunch?

I'm not sure; from my understanding of the ecological definition of parasitism, that's just parasitism (meaning only that one species benefits and one is harmed), but I don't know whether there is something about relative host-parasite size technically in there.
posted by little onion at 10:15 AM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


That's a mind-blowing article, thanks.
posted by medusa at 10:50 AM on May 24, 2018


Perhaps a sin to mention recursive symbiosis without mentioning hyperparasitism, and so too a sin to mention hyperparasitism without quoting De Morgan (and one really mustn't quote De Morgan without citing Swift).

Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so, ad infinitum.
And the great fleas, themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

posted by little onion at 11:27 AM on May 24, 2018


the algae that genome creates are stressed-out and uncomfortable.... it seems that the survival of our genes -- and not our personal comfort -- are what matter most ...

Much like living in a city-organism where the rent's too high for the pay, then.
posted by Twang at 7:08 PM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


The mitochondria and chloroplasts inside eukaryotic cells started out as prokaryotes.

Yes, for mitochondria. For chloroplasts, the story is actually more complicated. It seems as though the green algae (chlorophyta is one name we use) and the red algae (rhodophyta being a name for them) independently gained prokaryotic endosymbiotes that eventually became their chloroplasts. But then, it happened again. Chloroplast DNA gives us a completely different eukaryotic phylogenetic tree from that of nuclear DNA, and the explanation developed by Lynn Margulis and others is that this is due to secondary endosymbiosis. Some amoeboids, eugleanoids, and others independently gained green algae endosymbionts, while the kelps, diatoms, dinoflagellates, and others independently gained red algae endosymbionts.

So yes, there has been endosymbiosis of one eukaryote inside another before. Many times. It's just that pop-science writers usually forget that much of the absolute diversity among eukaryotes is found in things that are not plants, animals, or fungi.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:20 PM on May 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


When the headline and article start off by denying that symbiotic bacteria inside cow stomachs help to digest cellulose, why should I take the rest of the article any more seriously than a newspaper horoscope?

In conclusion, moo!
posted by cattypist at 5:07 PM on May 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


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