title: The prey's scent - Volatile organic compound mediated interactions between soil bacteria and their protist predators.
abstract: Protists are major predators of bacteria in soils. However, it remains unknown how protists sense their prey in this highly complex environment. Here, we investigated whether volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of six phylogenetic distinct soil bacteria affect the performance of three different soil protists and how that relates to direct feeding interactions. We observed that most bacteria affected protist activity by VOCs. However, the response of protists to the VOCs was strongly dependent on both the bacterial and protist interacting partner. Stimulation of protist activity by volatiles and in direct trophic interaction assays often coincided, suggesting that VOCs serve as signals for protists to sense suitable prey. Furthermore, bacterial terpene synthase mutants lost the ability to affect protists, indicating that terpenes represent key components of VOC-mediated communication. Overall, we demonstrate that volatiles are directly involved in protist-bacterial predator-prey interactions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Kristin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schulz-Bohm
authors.affiliation: Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen, Netherlands.|Laboratory of Nematology, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0734-727X
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Geisen
authors.affiliation: Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: E R Jasper
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Wubs
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Chunxu
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen, Netherlands.|Department of of Soil Quality, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Wietse
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: de Boer
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Paolina
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Garbeva
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000378:metabolism*; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000502:physiology*; D012988:Soil Microbiology; D055549:Volatile Organic Compounds / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D055549:Volatile Organic Compounds