endosymbiotic bacterium-associated environment
An environmental system determined by an organism which comprises the cytoplasm, periplasm, or outer cell surface of a bacterial cell that is itself an endosymbiont inside another organism, as inhabited by other, taxonomically distinct microorganisms.
Source attestations
| Source | Label / path | Assertions | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| GOLD | Host-associated > Endosymbionts > Bacteria |
1 | ORGANISM |
Broader habitats
- environmental system determined by an organism
ENVO:01001000 - Endosymbionts
habitatmech:GOLD.895a2372e5
Related terms
- Bacteria
NCBITaxon:2
Curation
-
CONFIRM_UNGROUNDED
Confirmed UNGROUNDED: no ontology term fits this concept. NCBITaxon:2 'Bacteria' kept as an xref. Host-taxon reversal (#114): this was NOT_APPLICABLE on the reasoning that 'a host taxon is not a habitat'. That reasoning is wrong, and the corpus already contradicted it — the same kind of concept was treated as a habitat for Sponge, Nematoda, Reptilia, Mammals, Birds and Fish, which keep their own identity and a term request for an <X>-associated environment. Host-associated > Porifera was NOT_APPLICABLE while its own child Porifera > Sponge was a term request.An organism acting as a host IS a habitat: it is where the microbe lives, and ENVO models exactly this at plant-associated, animal-associated and fungi-associated environment. What is not a habitat is the TAXON TERM — a phylum is a class of organisms, not a place — so the taxon stays an xref (#99) and the concept keeps its own identity as a term-request candidate. NOT_APPLICABLE said the concept is not a habitat, which is a stronger and false claim. (source concept habitatmech:GOLD.a89688e0ba)
-
DEFINED
Defined as 'endosymbiotic bacterium-associated environment' under ENVO:01001000 'environmental system determined by an organism'. Definition authored from the existing item-level #114 decision, GOLD's Host-associated > Endosymbionts > Bacteria source path, the committed Bacteria deep-research report under research/habitats/, the GOLD OLS path at https://w3id.org/gold.path/4732, and MIxS-SA's treatment of symbionts as hosts (DOI:10.1038/s43705-022-00092-w). The requested label is scoped to the Endosymbionts branch because GOLD also has a distinct Host-associated > Microbial > Bacteria record already requested as bacterium-associated environment. Issue #350 clarified this as a bacterial host-cell habitat to avoid conflating the term with ordinary animal-associated bacterial endosymbionts in which the bacterium is the occupant rather than the host. ENVO:01001000 is the tightest vendored genus until bacterium-associated and endosymbiont-associated environment intermediates exist; NCBITaxon:2 remains an xref, not a habitat identity. No exact synonym was authored because GOLD's Bacteria label is broad and ambiguous.