No evidence of a cleaning mutualism between burying beetles and their phoretic mites
| Autor: | Rebecca M. Kilner, Thomas M. Houslay, Ana Duarte, Ornela De Gasperin, Sheena C. Cotter, Giuseppe Boncoraglio, Martin Welch |
|---|---|
| Přispěvatelé: | Duarte, Ana [0000-0002-1215-0458], Cotter, Sheena C [0000-0002-3801-8316], Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
0301 basic medicine Male Bodily Secretions lcsh:Medicine Breeding 01 natural sciences Sexual Behavior Animal Anti-Infective Agents immune system diseases Poecilochirus lcsh:Science Mutualism (biology) Mites Multidisciplinary integumentary system Ecology Reproduction food and beverages C120 Behavioural Biology Nicrophorus vespilloides Breed Coleoptera C550 Immunology Functional significance Female C180 Ecology FOS: Medical biotechnology C140 Developmental/Reproductive Biology C111 Parasitology Biology 010603 evolutionary biology Article 03 medical and health sciences Symbiosis parasitic diseases Animals Carrion C150 Environmental Biology C300 Zoology Bacteria lcsh:R C182 Evolution biology.organism_classification Anti-Infective Agents/metabolism Bacteria/classification Bodily Secretions/metabolism Coleoptera/metabolism Coleoptera/microbiology Mites/classification Mites/physiology respiratory tract diseases C500 Microbiology 030104 developmental biology lcsh:Q C100 Biology Species richness |
| Zdroj: | Scientific reports, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 13838 Scientific Reports Scientific Reports, Vol 7, Iss 1, Pp 1-12 (2017) |
| Popis: | Burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) breed on small vertebrate carcasses, which they shave and smear with antimicrobial exudates. Producing antimicrobials imposes a fitness cost on burying beetles, which rises with the potency of the antimicrobial defence. Burying beetles also carry phoretic mites (Poecilochirus carabi complex), which breed alongside them on the carcass. Here we test the novel hypothesis that P. carabi mites assist burying beetles in clearing the carcass of bacteria as a side-effect of grazing on the carrion. We manipulated the bacterial environment on carcasses and measured the effect on the beetle in the presence and absence of mites. With next-generation sequencing, we investigated how mites influence the bacterial communities on the carcass. We show that mites: 1) cause beetles to reduce the antibacterial activity of their exudates but 2) there are no consistent fitness benefits of breeding alongside mites. We also find that mites increase bacterial diversity and richness on the carcass, but do not reduce bacterial abundance. The current evidence does not support a cleaning mutualism between burying beetles and P. carabi mites, but more work is needed to understand the functional significance and fitness consequences for the beetle of mite-associated changes to the bacterial community on the carcass. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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