Individual variation in the avian gut microbiota: The influence of host state and environmental heterogeneity.

Autor: Somers SE; School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Distillery Fields, North Mall, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland., Davidson GL; School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Distillery Fields, North Mall, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.; Department of Psychology, Downing Street, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.; School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK., Johnson CN; APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.; Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark, Fermoy, Ireland., Reichert MS; School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Distillery Fields, North Mall, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.; Department of Integrative Biology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA., Crane JMS; School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Distillery Fields, North Mall, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland., Ross RP; APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.; Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark, Fermoy, Ireland., Stanton C; APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.; Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark, Fermoy, Ireland., Quinn JL; School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Distillery Fields, North Mall, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.; Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Molecular ecology [Mol Ecol] 2023 Jun; Vol. 32 (12), pp. 3322-3339. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Mar 27.
DOI: 10.1111/mec.16919
Abstrakt: The gut microbiota have important consequences for host biological processes and there is some evidence that they also affect fitness. However, the complex, interactive nature of ecological factors that influence the gut microbiota has scarcely been investigated in natural populations. We sampled the gut microbiota of wild great tits (Parus major) at different life stages allowing us to evaluate how microbiota varied with respect to a diverse range of key ecological factors of two broad types: (1) host state, namely age and sex, and the life history variables, timing of breeding, fecundity and reproductive success; and (2) the environment, including habitat type, the distance of the nest to the woodland edge, and the general nest and woodland site environments. The gut microbiota varied with life history and the environment in many ways that were largely dependent on age. Nestlings were far more sensitive to environmental variation than adults, pointing to a high degree of flexibility at an important time in development. As nestlings developed their microbiota from one to two weeks of life, they retained consistent (i.e., repeatable) among-individual differences. However these apparent individual differences were driven entirely by the effect of sharing the same nest. Our findings point to important early windows during development in which the gut microbiota are most sensitive to a variety of environmental drivers at multiple scales, and suggest reproductive timing, and hence potentially parental quality or food availability, are linked with the microbiota. Identifying and explicating the various ecological sources that shape an individual's gut bacteria is of vital importance for understanding the gut microbiota's role in animal fitness.
(© 2023 The Authors. Molecular Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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