as small as a world and as large as alone, rhamphotheca: Smallest Farmers Found? Amoebas...

7:20pm January 2, 2012

rhamphotheca:

Smallest Farmers Found? Amoebas Carry, “Seeds”
by Mason Inman

In the developed world, the small farmer may be going extinct. But among some amoebas, small farming—really small farming—is still a viable survival strategy, a new study says. Generally speaking, when Dictyostelium discoideum amoebas run short of bacteria to eat in a patch of soil—presumably because the bacteria themselves are starving—the single-celled life-forms “start ‘talking’ to each other, and they gather together,” said lead study author Debra Brock.
“When there’re about a hundred thousand amoebas gathered together, then they form a fruiting body.” (a slime mold)
The resulting stalk sticks up into the wind and releases spores carrying the amoebas—and, it turns out, a few bacterial “seeds” too. Brock and her colleagues found that, rather than eating all the food before leaving the previous location, the amoebas had encased the last morsels in shells for traveling. When the spores landed, the amoebas emerged and released the bacteria seeds, planting them in hopefully greener pastures, much as human farmers move from exhausted fields to fertile ones.
“They bring their preferred bacteria, and this allows them to prosper and flourish in the new area,” said Brock, a biologist at Rice University in Houston, Texas…
(read more: National Geo) (photo: Owen Gilbert)

Smallest Farmers Found? Amoebas Carry, “Seeds”

by Mason Inman

In the developed world, the small farmer may be going extinct. But among some amoebas, small farming—really small farming—is still a viable survival strategy, a new study says. Generally speaking, when Dictyostelium discoideum amoebas run short of bacteria to eat in a patch of soil—presumably because the bacteria themselves are starving—the single-celled life-forms “start ‘talking’ to each other, and they gather together,” said lead study author Debra Brock.

“When there’re about a hundred thousand amoebas gathered together, then they form a fruiting body.” (a slime mold)

The resulting stalk sticks up into the wind and releases spores carrying the amoebas—and, it turns out, a few bacterial “seeds” too. Brock and her colleagues found that, rather than eating all the food before leaving the previous location, the amoebas had encased the last morsels in shells for traveling. When the spores landed, the amoebas emerged and released the bacteria seeds, planting them in hopefully greener pastures, much as human farmers move from exhausted fields to fertile ones.

“They bring their preferred bacteria, and this allows them to prosper and flourish in the new area,” said Brock, a biologist at Rice University in Houston, Texas…

(read more: National Geo) (photo: Owen Gilbert)