At a Glance
- Researchers studying the single-celled organism Stentor found that forming temporary colonies allows them to create stronger water currents, improving feeding efficiency and suggesting a possible early step toward multicellular evolution.
- Mathematical models showed that Stentors benefit more from cooperation than isolation, especially weaker individuals, which supports the idea that early multicellular organisms gained advantages through collective behavior.
- Although they collaborate when food is abundant, Stentors revert to solitary behavior when food becomes scarce, illustrating a natural tension between cooperation and independence in simple and complex life forms.
- The colonies formed by Stentors are temporary, raising questions about what prevents them from becoming permanent multicellular organisms and offering a model for the transitional phases of early life.
- This study provides a new perspective on the evolution of multicellularity, showing how short-term cooperation among cells could have set the stage for the emergence of complex living systems.
A new study has shed light on how the early stages of multicellularity might have evolved, focusing on Stentor, a single-celled organism. Researchers found that when Stentors form temporary colonies, they experience improved feeding by creating stronger water flows together. This finding suggests that forming colonies could have been an early step toward multicellular life, providing benefits like more efficient food gathering. The study, published in Nature Physics, challenges previous ideas and provides a new perspective on how complex life might have evolved.
Stentors are trumpet-shaped, single-celled organisms that live in water. In the lab, when Stentors are placed close together, they create stronger water vortexes, allowing them to capture more prey than they could individually. The researchers used mathematical models to analyze how these interactions lead to more efficient feeding. Interestingly, they found that weaker Stentors benefit more from working together than stronger ones, which could have implications for understanding how early multicellular organisms gained advantages from cooperation.
However, the Stentor colonies are not permanent. The study also observed that the Stentors were happy to stay together and feed when food was plentiful. However, they separated and reverted to foraging when food became scarce. This behavior highlights the trade-off between cooperation and individualism, a concept still relevant to human society today. It also raises questions about why these colonies do not evolve into more permanent multicellular structures.
This discovery provides valuable insights into the early stages of multicellularity, where cells benefit from working together but are not yet permanently bound. Researchers believe this behavior in Stentors could be an example of how early life forms evolved to cooperate temporarily before the evolution of permanent multicellular organisms. This study gives us a glimpse into the beginnings of complex life, helping scientists understand how individual cells may have come together in the first place to form more complex organisms.
References
- Shekhar, S., Guo, H., Colin, S. P., Marshall, W., Kanso, E., & Costello, J. H. (2025). Cooperative hydrodynamics accompany multicellular-like colonial organization in the unicellular ciliate Stentor. Nature Physics. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-025-02787-y
- Marine Biological Laboratory. (2025, March 31). ‘She loves me, she loves me not’: Physical forces encouraged evolution of multicellular life, scientists propose. Phys.Org; Marine Biological Laboratory. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-physical-evolution-multicellular-life-scientists.html
