From the void

A swarm of Bacillus subtilis, millions if not billions of individuals, whose electrical activity can force distant neighbours to join a biofilm. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

An example of a complex structure emerging from the void, perhaps from nothing more complicated than the vagaries of potassium mediated electrical signalling, perhaps an evolutionary precursor of what our neurons get up to.

But dangerous in the sense that the signalling is not species specific and the signals from one kind of bacteria can be received and acted on by individuals of another kind. Mixed race indeed - or, more positively, an elementary example of symbiosis.

Brought to me by Neuwrite West.

Reference 1: Species-independent attraction to biofilms through electrical signalling – Humphries, Jacqueline and others – 2017.

Reference 2: Ion channels enable electrical communication in bacterial communities - Arthur Prindle, Jintao Liu, Munehiro Asally, San Ly, Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo & Gürol M. Süel – 2015.