Small Eats Big: Ecology and Diversity of Bdellovibrio and Like Organisms, and their Dynamics in Predator-Prey Interactions

The ecological role of predation is well established in the animal world. Not so in the bacterial realm where the number of known bacterial predators is small and their phylogenetic affiliations largely unknown. The best-characterized bacterial predators belong to the Bdellovibrio-Bacteriovorax group (Bdellovibrio and like organisms, the BLOs). As predation at this trophic level may be of ecological significance, there is a need to better understand the diversity and the phylogeny of bacterial predators as well as the kinetics of their interactions with their prey. Such studies could also help to develop new approaches for the control of plant and animal Gram negative pathogenic bacteria. Here, we present a short review on the ecology, diversity and the taxonomy of predatory bacteria, with an emphasis on BLOs as well as on the dynamics of the interaction between a selected strain of Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus and its Erwinia carotovora subsp. carotovora prey under high and low predator:prey ratios.