ABSTRACT
The light organ symbiosis between the Hawaiian bobtail squid Euprymna scolopes (Mollusca/Cephalopoda/Sepiolidae) and the luminous Gram-negative bacterium Vibrio fischeri (Gammaproteobacteria/Vibrionales) is a binary association that has been studied for decades to understand the establishment and maintenance of symbiosis. Within hours of emerging from the egg, each generation of squid acquires its bacterial partners from planktonic populations in ambient seawater. Studies using wild populations of host and symbiont, together with genetic manipulation of V. fischeri strains, have determined that the complex processes of partner recognition, specificity determination, colonization, development, function, and persistence of the association rely on key, evolutionarily conserved, structural features and interactions of the partners.
