The Ecology of Symbiotic Micro-organisms

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the abundance and distribution of symbiotic micro-organisms, both in symbiosis and in isolation, and to explore the processes which may underlie the observed patterns. The chapter also illustrates the dearth of basic information on the ecology of most endosymbiotic micro-organisms. Only infrequently have ecological principles been used to explore the biology of these organisms, and their ecology has not, to date, developed into a coherent field of research. The technical advances relate to the intractability of most symbiotic micro-organisms to traditional methods in microbiology, which require isolation into axenic culture for identification and study. Symbiotic microorganisms are either unculturable, or they lose their symbiotic characteristics when isolated from the association. Much of this difficulty has been circumvented by the advent of molecular methods, especially those using PCR-technology, which provide a basis to study the abundance and diversity of micro-organisms in natural habitats, in principle without any recourse to axenic cultivation.