Metacommunity theory for transmission of heritable symbionts within insect communities.

ABSTRACT: Microbial organisms are ubiquitous in nature and often form communities closely associated with their host, referred to as the microbiome. The microbiome has strong influence on species interactions, but microbiome studies rarely take interactions between hosts into account, and network interaction studies rarely consider microbiomes. Here, we propose to use metacommunity theory as a framework to unify research on microbiomes and host communities by considering host insects and their microbes as discretely defined "communities of communities" linked by dispersal (transmission) through biotic interactions. We provide an overview of the effects of heritable symbiotic bacteria on their insect hosts and how those effects subsequently influence host interactions, thereby altering the host commu

SUBMITTER: Brown JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7029081 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature