Parental care contributes to vertical transmission of microbes in a skin-feeding and direct-developing caecilian.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Our current understanding of vertebrate skin and gut microbiomes, and their vertical transmission, remains incomplete as major lineages and varied forms of parental care remain unexplored. The diverse and elaborate forms of parental care exhibited by amphibians constitute an ideal system to study microbe transmission, yet investigations of vertical transmission among frogs and salamanders have been inconclusive. In this study, we assess bacteria transmission in Herpele squalostoma, an oviparous direct-developing caecilian in which females obligately attend juveniles that feed on their mother's skin (dermatophagy).

Results

We used 16S rRNA amplicon-sequencing of the skin and gut of wild caught H. squalostoma individuals (males, females, including those attending ju

SUBMITTER: Kouete MT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10184399 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature