Journal
JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY INTERFACE
Volume 8, Issue 57, Pages 568-577Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2010.0417
Keywords
nematodes; chemotaxis; host plant location; rhizosphere; signalling
Categories
Funding
- UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI)
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
- British Council
- Indian Council of Agricultural Research
- BBSRC [BBS/E/C/00004964] Funding Source: UKRI
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BBS/E/C/00004964] Funding Source: researchfish
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It has long been recognized that chemotaxis is the primary means by which nematodes locate host plants. Nonetheless, chemotaxis has received scant attention. We show that chemotaxis is predicted to take nematodes to a source of a chemo-attractant via the shortest possible routes through the labyrinth of air-filled or water-filled channels within a soil through which the attractant diffuses. There are just two provisos: (i) all of the channels through which the attractant diffuses are accessible to the nematodes and (ii) nematodes can resolve all chemical gradients no matter how small. Previously, this remarkable consequence of chemotaxis had gone unnoticed. The predictions are supported by experimental studies of the movement patterns of the root-knot nematodes Meloidogyne incognita and Meloidogyne graminicola in modified Y-chamber olfactometers filled with Pluronic gel. By providing two routes to a source of the attractant, one long and one short, our experiments, the first to demonstrate the routes taken by nematodes to plant roots, serve to test our predictions. Our data show that nematodes take the most direct route to their preferred hosts (as predicted) but often take the longest route towards poor hosts. We hypothesize that a complex of repellent and attractant chemicals influences the interaction between nematodes and their hosts.
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