Temporal Stability and the Effect of Transgenerational Transfer on Fecal Microbiota Structure in a Long Distance Migratory Bird.

ABSTRACT: Animal bodies are inhabited by a taxonomically and functionally diverse community of symbiotic and commensal microorganisms. From an ecological and evolutionary perspective, inter-individual variation in host-associated microbiota contributes to physiological and immune system variation. As such, host-associated microbiota may be considered an integral part of the host's phenotype, serving as a substrate for natural selection. This assumes that host-associated microbiota exhibits high temporal stability, however, and that its composition is shaped by trans-generational transfer or heritable host-associated microbiota modulators encoded by the host genome. Although this concept is widely accepted, its crucial assumptions have rarely been tested in wild vertebrate populations. We performed 1

SUBMITTER: Kreisinger J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5292904 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature