254
MAURICE WELSCH
that can be harmful to life. Vuillemin (6), however, coined the word
by analogy with symbiosis which, by general assent, covers only biological associations that are, or that we believe to be, useful to the partners
involved. Similarly, antibiosis was meant to designate a kind of natural
relationship which frequently exists between living beings and makes
one of them harmful to the other. Even with this more restricted meaning, it still comprises a large number of different biological phenomena,
ranging from the obvious destruction of living beings by others to more
subtle and complex examples of competition at all levels of the biosphere.
So diverse are the manifestations of antibiosis, so different the
mechanisms at play in each case, that the need for a common name
covering all the possible phenomena involved was never acutely felt.
In fact, antibiosis was, originally, more or less synonymous with biological competition, biological antagonism, struggle for life, and so on. None
of these expressions ever won undisputed supremacy leading to the
eradication of the others from scientific vocabulary. Antibiosis was probably even less used than any of the others.
And there were good reasons for this, since, from the very start, the
word antibiosis was endowed with some vagueness and early interpreted
differently by various biologists. Thus, for Vuillemin, close biological associations with harmful effects, such as those observed in many instances
of parasitism, were not to be included in antibiosis. But, on the contrary,
for Ward (7), who, some ten years later, adopted Vuillemin's word,
antibiosis precisely designated more particularly the intimate and noxious
associations between host and parasite and thus became the exact
antonym of symbiosis in its strictest sense.
Little used between 1900 and 1928, the word antibiosis was then
revived by Papacostas and Gate (8), who gave it a much more restricted
meaning. Discarding predation and parasitism, they used it to designate
only those associations between microorganisms living side by side which
result in harmful effects for one or several of the partners involved,
whether it be their death, the inhibition of their growth and multiplication, or the impairment of any one of their "normal" activities. To the
microbial associations which, conversely, result in so-called favorable
effects, such as an increase of growth rate, of the total yield, or of any
biochemical activity, they applied the name stimulation. Later on,
probiosis was suggested as a better one and many new words were
introduced to designate particular instances of either antibiosis or stimulation (9).
Papacostas and Gate visualized antibiosis as a somewhat artificial
phenomenon, occurring in culture media under experimental conditions.
They thought that it was purely fortuitous and devoid of any biological
MAURICE WELSCH
that can be harmful to life. Vuillemin (6), however, coined the word
by analogy with symbiosis which, by general assent, covers only biological associations that are, or that we believe to be, useful to the partners
involved. Similarly, antibiosis was meant to designate a kind of natural
relationship which frequently exists between living beings and makes
one of them harmful to the other. Even with this more restricted meaning, it still comprises a large number of different biological phenomena,
ranging from the obvious destruction of living beings by others to more
subtle and complex examples of competition at all levels of the biosphere.
So diverse are the manifestations of antibiosis, so different the
mechanisms at play in each case, that the need for a common name
covering all the possible phenomena involved was never acutely felt.
In fact, antibiosis was, originally, more or less synonymous with biological competition, biological antagonism, struggle for life, and so on. None
of these expressions ever won undisputed supremacy leading to the
eradication of the others from scientific vocabulary. Antibiosis was probably even less used than any of the others.
And there were good reasons for this, since, from the very start, the
word antibiosis was endowed with some vagueness and early interpreted
differently by various biologists. Thus, for Vuillemin, close biological associations with harmful effects, such as those observed in many instances
of parasitism, were not to be included in antibiosis. But, on the contrary,
for Ward (7), who, some ten years later, adopted Vuillemin's word,
antibiosis precisely designated more particularly the intimate and noxious
associations between host and parasite and thus became the exact
antonym of symbiosis in its strictest sense.
Little used between 1900 and 1928, the word antibiosis was then
revived by Papacostas and Gate (8), who gave it a much more restricted
meaning. Discarding predation and parasitism, they used it to designate
only those associations between microorganisms living side by side which
result in harmful effects for one or several of the partners involved,
whether it be their death, the inhibition of their growth and multiplication, or the impairment of any one of their "normal" activities. To the
microbial associations which, conversely, result in so-called favorable
effects, such as an increase of growth rate, of the total yield, or of any
biochemical activity, they applied the name stimulation. Later on,
probiosis was suggested as a better one and many new words were
introduced to designate particular instances of either antibiosis or stimulation (9).
Papacostas and Gate visualized antibiosis as a somewhat artificial
phenomenon, occurring in culture media under experimental conditions.
They thought that it was purely fortuitous and devoid of any biological