Abstract
A long-standing question in the study of luminous bacterial symbionts has been: What is the importance of light-emission to the bacteria? We have used the symbiosis between Vibrio fischeri and the Hawaiian sepiolid squid Euprymna scolopes as a model system (McFall-Ngai & Ruby, 1991; Ruby, 1996) with which to discover the answer to this question. Within hours of hatching, juvenile squids become inoculated by a few cells of V. fischeri present in the ambient seawater (Ruby & Asato, 1993). These bacteria rapidly colonize the epithelium-lined crypts of the nascent light-emitting organ, attaining a population size of about one million cells. Their light emission is used by the host in its nocturnal behavior (McFall-Ngai, 1997), and evidence is accumulating that suggests that the host regulates the bacterial luminescence on multiple levels (Boetttcher & Ruby, 1995; Boettcher et al., 1996).
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