Bacteria have a sense of their own number. They release and sense signaling molecules that accumulate with increasing cell numbers, which allows them to change their behavior when a certain group size is reached. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg and Heidelberg University has now been able to show that bacteria might be capable of even more: they could perceive the proportions of different groups of bacteria in their environment.
Click here for original story, Microcensus in bacteria: Bacillus subtilis can determine proportions of different groups within a mixed population
Source: Phys.org