Behaviour of dictyostelium discoideum amoebae and Escherichia coli grown together in chemostat culture

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Abstract
When Dictyostelium discoideum amoebae and Escherichia coli were grown together in chemostat culture damped oscillations in the popullation densities of the organisms occurred followed by a sudden increase in bacterial numbers and a concommitant decrease in the number of amoebae. After the system had come to equilibrium altering the dilution rate resulted in a monotonic change in the experimental variables to new steady state levels. A square wave increase in the concentration of limiting nutrient in the feed medium during the oscillatory phase of culture produced a sinusoidal response indistinguishable from that prior to the perturbation. The results are more complicated than those predicted by simple models of microbial predator-prey dynamics although they correspond most nearly to models which incorporate saturation kinetics.