chemotaxis refers to the ability of a microbe to
Chemotaxis Chemotaxis (from chemo- + taxis) is the movement of an organism in response to a chemical stimulus.[1] Somatic cells, bacteria, and other single-cell or multicellular organisms direct their movements according to certain chemicals in their environment. This is important for bacteria to find food (e.g., glucose) by swimming toward the highest concentration of food molecules, or to flee from poisons (e.g., phenol). In multicellular organisms, chemotaxis is critical to early development (e.g., movement of sperm towards the egg during fertilization) and subsequent phases of development (e.g., migration of neurons or lymphocytes) as well as in normal function. In addition, it has been recognized that mechanisms that allow chemotaxis in animals can be subverted during cancer metastasis.
Rhizosphere The food web in the rhizosphere can be considered as three different channels with two different sources of energy; the detritus-dependent channels are fungi and bacterial species and the root energy dependent channel consists of nematodes, symbiotic species, and some arthropods.[19] This food web is constantly in flux as the amount of detrius available and the rate of root sloughing changes as roots grow and age. This bacterial channel is considered to be a faster channel because of the ability of species to focus on more accessible resources in the rhizosphere and have faster regeneration times compared with the fungal channel. All three of these channels are also interrelated to the roots that form the base of the rhizosphere ecosystem and the predators, such as the nematodes and protists, that prey upon many of the same species of mircroflora.