In addition to their common planktonic lifestyle, bacteria frequently live in surface‐associated habitats. Surface motility is essential for exploring these habitats for food sources. However, many bacteria are found on surfaces, even though they lack features required for migrating along surfaces. How these canonical non‐motile bacteria adapt to the environmental fluctuations on surfaces remains unknown. Here, we report a previously unknown surface motility mode of the canonical non‐motile bacterium, Dietzia sp. DQ12‐45‐1b, which is triggered by interaction with a dimorphic prosthecate bacterium, Glycocaulis alkaliphilus 6B‐8T. Dietzia cells exhibits ‘sliding’‐like motility in an area where the strain Glycocaulis cells was pre‐colonized with a sufficient density. Our analysis also demonstrates that Dietzia degrade n‐alkanes and provide Glycocaulis with the resulting metabolites for survival, which in turn induced directional migration of Dietzia towards nutrient‐rich environments. Such interaction‐triggered migration was also found between Dietzia and Glycocaulis strains isolated from other habitats, suggesting that this mutualistic relationship ubiquitously occurs in natural environments. In conclusion, we propose a novel model for such a ‘win‐win’ strategy, whereby non‐motile bacteria pay metabolites to dimorphic prosthecate bacteria in return for migrating to seek for nutrients, which may represent a common strategy for canonically non‐motile bacteria living on a surface.

中文翻译：

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固着细菌通过互惠的种间相互作用释放表面运动能力

除了常见的浮游生活方式外，细菌还经常生活在与地表相关的栖息地。表面运动对于探索这些栖息地的食物来源至关重要。然而，在表面上发现了许多细菌，即使它们缺乏沿表面迁移所需的特征。这些典型的非运动细菌如何适应表面的环境波动仍然未知。在这里，我们报告了一种以前未知的典型非运动细菌Dietzia sp 的表面运动模式。DQ12-45-1b，由与二态性假体细菌Glycocaulis 嗜碱6B-8T 相互作用触发。Dietzia细胞在Glycocaulis菌株所在的区域表现出类似“滑动”的运动细胞以足够的密度预定殖。我们的分析还表明，Dietzia降解正构烷烃并为Glycocaulis提供所产生的代谢物以供生存，这反过来又诱导Dietzia向营养丰富的环境定向迁移。在Dietzia和Glycocaulis之间也发现了这种相互作用引发的迁移从其他栖息地分离的菌株，表明这种互惠关系普遍存在于自然环境中。总之，我们为这种“双赢”策略提出了一种新模型，即非运动细菌将代谢物支付给二态的假体细菌，以换取迁移以寻找营养，这可能代表了典型的非运动细菌的常见策略生活在一个表面上。