Abstract
Caenorhabditis elegans is a preeminent model
organism, but the natural ecology of this nematode
has been elusive. A four-year survey of French orchards
published in BMC Biology reveals thriving populations
of C. elegans (and Caenorhabditis briggsae) in rotting
fruit and plant stems. Rather than being simply a
‘soil nematode’, C. elegans appears to be a ‘plant-rot
nematode’. These studies signal a growing interest
in the integrated genomics and ecology of these
tractable animals.
Commentary
Caenorhabditis elegans, the free-living nematode tamed
as a new model organism by Sydney Brenner in the 1960s
[1], has become a keystone species in the ecology of
scientific knowledge. The ease with which C. elegans can
be grown, manipulated and observed has driven biomedical
research into new areas and ‘the worm’ has been
a silent collaborator in three Nobel prizes, and thousands
of research articles over the past 50 years. While
primarily chosen because of the ease of genetic analysis,
interest in C. elegans was redoubled when it became the
first animal to have its whole genome sequenced [2]. The
genome revealed much about the basic machinery of
being an animal, and the specifics of being a nematode.
One of the greatest surprises was the discovery of over
1,280 putative chemoreceptor genes [3]. This exuberant
repertoire (even dogs have only approximately 1,200
olfactory and chemoreceptor genes) suggests that the
nematodes’ wild environment must be extraordinarily
complex. However, the true ecology of C. elegans has
remained enigmatic. In the laboratory it is clearly a
boom-and-bust ‘r-strategist’ - a single self-fertilizing
hermaphrodite (with an occasional rare male), given
enough agar plates, Escherichia coli food and willing lab