The natural history of Caenorhabditis elegans

Abstract

Summary In the laboratory, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans lives on the surface of nutrient agar in Petri dishes, feeding on a lawn of the uracil auxotroph strain OP50, an Escherichia coli mutant strain. This sentence sums up the fundamentals of C. elegans ecology, as most of us know it. While over 15,000 articles on diverse biological aspects of C. elegans attest to the worm's undisputable virtues as a major model organism, its biology in the wild remains mysterious. To properly interpret and fully understand the available wealth of genetic, molecular and other biological observations made in the laboratory, it will be important to know its natural history and to place the species in its ecological and evolutionary context. With the aim of connecting the discoveries that have been made about C. elegans biology to its ‘real life', we shall discuss recent studies on the worm's natural habitat and population biology, and outline key issues in attaining a modern natural history of C. elegans.