Strategies for managing rival bacterial communities: Lessons from burying beetles.

ABSTRACT: The role of bacteria in animal development, ecology and evolution is increasingly well understood, yet little is known of how animal behaviour affects bacterial communities. Animals that benefit from defending a key resource from microbial competitors are likely to evolve behaviours to control or manipulate the animal's associated external microbiota. We describe four possible mechanisms by which animals could gain a competitive edge by disrupting a rival bacterial community: "weeding," "seeding," "replanting" and "preserving." By combining detailed behavioural observations with molecular and bioinformatic analyses, we then test which of these mechanisms best explains how burying beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides, manipulate the bacterial communities on their carcass breeding resource. Bur

SUBMITTER: Duarte A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5836980 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature