Pathogenic Bacteria and Fungi on Thorns, Spines and Prickles
As a child that used to walk barefoot in the summer and step on various sharp objects including thorns, spines and prickles, and because of the wounds inflicted on me, several times I got emergency anti-tettanus injections. After I understood that thorns,
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Pathogenic Bacteria and Fungi on Thorns, Spines and Prickles
As a child that used to walk barefoot in the summer and step on various sharp objects including thorns, spines and prickles, and because of the wounds inflicted on me, several times I got emergency anti-tettanus injections. After I understood that thorns, spines and prickles are commonly visually aposematic, I wondered how common are bacterial pathogens found on these sharp pointed structures and with our enthusiastic departmental microbiologist Malka Halpern I began to examine this. Four publications (Halpern et al. 2007a, b, 2011; Lev-Yadun and Halpern 2008) showed that thorns, spines and prickles regularly harbor an array of pathogenic bacteria and fungi and discussed its potential significance in the evolution and functionality of plant aposematism. Spines from date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) trees, thorns from common hawthorn (Crataegus aronia) trees and two thorny shrub species, thorny burnet (Sarcopoterium spinosum) and manna tree (Alhagi graecorum), were sampled for aerobic and anaerobic bacteria in Israel. Every typical mature individual of these trees and shrubs carries hundreds or even thousands of conspicuous and therefore potentially aposematic spines or thorns. The common knowledge about the severity and frequency of aggressive bacterial infections among date-palm orchard workers in Israel following spine wounding, has necessitated the costly practice of removal of all the millions of spines from many of the orchards by mechanical saws. This was a very good indication that an important aspect of defensive ecology was hidden there. Indeed, even the small number of spines and thorns studied (dozens) resulted in the cloning and identification of several very pathogenic aerobic and anaerobic bacteria species including Clostridium perfringens, Bacillus anthracis and Pantoea agglomerans (Halpern et al. 2007a, b, 2011). Clostridium perfringens is known to be a flesh-eater in that it can produce a necrotizing infection of the skeletal muscle called gas gangrene (Shimizu et al. 2002). Bacillus anthracis is the etiological agent of anthrax, a notoriously acute fatal disease in both domesticated and wild animals, particularly herbivorous ones, and humans (Jensen et al. 2003). The cutaneous form of the disease is usually acquired through injured skin or mucous membranes, a typical thorn, spine or prickle injury. Clostridium tetani is the etiological agent of © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 S. Lev-Yadun, Defensive (anti-herbivory) Coloration in Land Plants, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42096-7_29
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Pathogenic Bacteria and Fungi on Thorns, Spines and Prickles
tetanus, a serious disease in humans and animals can be fatal when left untreated. Thorn, spine and prickle injuries have been known to cause tetanus in the USA, Ethiopia, and Turkey (Hodes and Teferedegne 1990; Ergonul et al. 2003; Pascual et al. 2003). In their review of the medical literature, Halpern et al. (2007b) found that septic inflammation caused by plant thorn
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