Natural variation in developmental life-history traits of the bacterium Myxococcus xanthus

The soil bacterium Myxococcus xanthus is a model for the study of cooperative microbial behaviours such as social motility and fruiting body formation. Several M. xanthus developmental traits that are frequently quantified for laboratory strains are likely to be significant components of fitness in natural populations, yet little is known about the degree to which such traits vary in the wild and may therefore be subject to natural selection. Here, we have tested whether several key M. xanthus developmental life-history traits have diverged significantly among strains both from globally distant origins and from within a sympatric, centimetre-scale population. The isolates examined here were found to vary considerably, in a heritable manner, in their rate of developmental aggregation and in both their rate and efficiency of spore production. Isolates also varied in the nutrient-concentration threshold triggering spore formation and in the heat resistance of spores. The large diversity of developmental phenotypes documented here leads to questions regarding the relative roles of selection and genetic drift in shaping the diversity of local soil populations with respect to these developmental traits. It also raises the question of whether fitness in the wild is largely determined by traits that are expressed independent of social context or by behaviours that are expressed only in genetically heterogeneous social groups.