The Incredible World of Bacterial Communities

These particular little green organisms show up in the background of other organism’s lives, providing pops of color among other debris. What you are looking at is not a single organism, but rather a gathering of them. Those green bits are consortia of bacteria.

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Journey to the Microcosmos is a Complexly production.

SOURCES:

[Yezpahr]

9:07 "Life does not draw hard lines around it, it simply does what works" This is the number 1 lesson of the channel and it never stops amazing/amusing me.
Does any virus participate in this practice of consortia, or do some of them have a distinctly different conglomerating action?

[bryanhumphreys]

I did work study at a microbiology lab in college, we had visiting scientists present all the time and I'll never forget when a scientist presented their paper on biofilms and how some bacteria 'sacrifice' themselves to help create the matrix for the biofilm. Under a microscope it almost looked like a cement apartment block made of fellow dead bacteria that transformed themselves into 'scaffolding.' When they showed the slide of the bacteria and the matrix there were audible gasps in the room.

[kylerosenberg]

I'm writing a book on this, so this has absolutely made my day! Thank you for making this amazing content!!!

[exploremicroscopy]

Damn. Nice job. A degree in microbiology and I've never heard of this. Very nice microscopy, too. Thanks James!

[Cinderpelt]

Consortiums and biofilms seem to be somewhat analogous to multicellularity- at least in its simplest forms.

[TheRogueWolf]

"When you say it like that, 'The Consortium' sounds almost like a dystopian entity...."

_Bacteriapunk 20.77µm?_

[katyab]

the top right fella(s) at 1:48 is going MENTAL

[kellyngo]

The way they are spinning out of control is so hilarious to me

[leekspinner]

Somehow, your videos combine both the quirky approach of modern videos and the calming yet whimsical narration of old documentaries. Great job!

[MrEiht]

Thanks for "Stick together, come on, come on and stick together
You know we made a vow, to leave one another never" roaming in my head...

[maiabones]

sometimes things around me make me fall in love with the universe again. this video is now one of those things. what a beautiful place it is to be here 😊

[davesextraneousinformation]

These guys remind me of animals like the Portuguese Man 'o War, a hydrozoan, that consists of four individual animals merged into one codependent unit.

[rayrerej]

I love these videos so much. I really hope you're taking care of yourself, Hank.

[MaryAnnNytowl]

Whenever there's a video with Hank telling me what's on the screen, peering into the microcosmos, I'm suddenly happier. 😊
❤❤

[tinfoilhatscholar]

Margulis!!! Give credit where credit is do. Lynn was the master who brought us all this awesome info back in the eighties.
Her theory on symbiosis, said that it, rather than random mutations is the primary driver of genetic evolution.

[alanthefisher]

If only countries/people could learn to work together as well as bacteria can haha

[Dominis.]

Please never stop making videos on this channel

[avenuestx]

Hank dude your awesome lol it's amazing how you're everywhere there's science

[Beryllahawk]

so... the green sulphur bacteria kinda domesticated the other prokaryote? Or well, certainly changed it to their own benefit. It's not quite parasitism but also not quite the sort of mutualism that we tend to think of first. How interesting!!
I feel like this might point to one of the baby-steps of evolution that progressed eventually to multicellular creatures. I remember when you talked about mitochondria, and how there's that hypothesis that the mitochondria used to be an independent creature, though I can't recall just now if you said it was a single celled one or not. Regardless, it certainly seems reasonable that perhaps this sort of gathering of "like minded beings" came first. And because evolution is the way it is (random and going with whatever lives long enough) - perhaps these consortia survived a set of conditions that offed most everything else?
It's really mind boggling to try and grasp just HOW MANY opportunities evolution has had to mess around in the microcosmos. Most of these prokaryotes live a matter of hours per generation, right? With about 8700 hours in a year (VERY rough estimate) - and 4 BILLION YEARS - oh and not forgetting that every single gene can get up to whatever sort of mischief? I can't even wrap my head around numbers that large. I'm never surprised at being astonished by what we find under the microscope. There's so much POSSIBLE that weird stuff is guaranteed - but it's still mysterious just what kind of weird we will find!

[I-temporary-bliss-state]

I finally found this very very good channel. I subscribed.