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Bacterial communication

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Abstract

Recent research on bacteria and other microorganisms has provided interesting insights into the nature of life, cooperation, evolution, individuality or species. In this paper, I focus on the capacity of bacteria to produce molecules that are usually classified as ’signals’ and I defend two claims. First, I argue that certain interactions between bacteria should actually qualify as genuine forms of communication. Second, I use this case study to revise our general theories of signaling. Among other things, I argue that a plausible requirement for a state to qualify as a signal is that it is a minimal cause.

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Notes

  1. For a defense of a non-etiological understanding of function in the context of bacterial communication, see Bich and Frick (2018).

  2. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this question.

  3. It is worth stressing that the cooperation requirement is compatible with different evolutionary dynamics of QS populations in the face of defectors. It has been argued, for instance, that QS acts as a cheater restraint (Bruger et al. 2021).

  4. Indeed, we are probably relying on a ’functional sense of mechanism’ (Garson 2013), since the relevant parts and interactions must have been selected (or stabilized) for this effect and, according to a popular theory of function, this suffices for an entity to acquire a function.

  5. I would like to thank an anonymous referee for pressing me on this issue.

  6. Obviously, a lot depends here on how ’arbitrary’ is defined. In any event, my purpose is not to present a knock-down argument, but only to highlight some difficulties related to a popular way of understanding this notion.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Xabier E. Barandiaran, Leonardo Bich, Mihnea Capraru, Arantza Etxeberria, John Horden, Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo, Manolo Martínez, Alvaro Moreno, Samir Okasha, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, Jon Umerez, Miguel Ángel Sebastián, Nicholas Shea and the audiences at the ISHPSSB conference in Oslo (2019) and IAS-Research Group Seminar (2020) at the University of the Basque Country. Financial support was provided by the MICIU project ’Varieties of Information’ (PGC2018-101425-B-I00).

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    Marc Artiga

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Artiga, M. Bacterial communication. Biol Philos 36, 39 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-021-09814-1

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