Really? Who first came across it at the microbe level?
I just read Prey and to be honest, it is one the scariest books I've read in a while. Still the concepts in it are wonderfully intriguing. I wonder if we are closer to the possiblities Crichtdon wrote about than we thought.
Regards,
Boiler Plate
Perhaps if you had gone on to read the rest of the article you would not have said that:
The conclusion that only highly evolved organisms have the ability to act collectively proved to be a stubborn prejudice, however. On several occasions, Nealson tried to publish a diagram in microbiology journals illustrating cell-to-cell signaling in V. fischeri, but peer reviewers rejected it. Bacteria just don't do this, the critics told him.