Ref ID : 7072
A. Sambanis and A.G. Fredrickson; Persistence of Bacteria in the Presence of Viable, Nonencysting Bacterivorous Ciliates. Microbial Ecology 16:197-211, 1988
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Laboratory studies of the interactions between a bacterial population and a population of bacterivorous ciliates consistently show that the bacteria are able to persist in the presence of viable ciliates. Reproduction of the bacteria, presumably at the expense of substrates produced by death and lysis of the ciliates and/or by their metabolic activity, has been suggested to be a factor involved in the observed bacterial persistence. Rates and extents of growth of Escherichia coli in broths of mixed cultures of this bacterium and the ciliate Tetrahymena pyriformis were determined in order to provide some data necessary to assess the importance of the suggested factor. In addition, an attempt was made to suppress bacterial growth on produced substrates so that feeding of the ciliates could be studied free of this complication. However, the procedure tested -addition of the antibiotic chloramphenicol (CM) at a concentration of 150 µg/ml- led to other complications that made it impossible to obtain the desired information about feeding.