Experimental depletion of gut microbiota diversity reduces host thermal tolerance and fitness under heat stress in a vertebrate ectotherm
Fontaine, S. S.; Mineo, P. M.; Kohl, K. D.
Show abstract
Predicting the responses of ectotherms to climate change is a global conservation priority which requires identifying factors that influence how animals respond physiologically to changing temperature. Host-associated microbial communities impact animal physiology and have been shown to influence host thermal tolerance in invertebrate systems. However, the role of commensal microbiota in thermal tolerance of ectothermic vertebrates is unknown. Here we show that experimentally depleting the diversity of the tadpole gut microbiome through environmental water sterilization reduces the hosts acute thermal tolerance to both heat and cold, alters the thermal sensitivity of locomotor performance, and reduces animal survival under acute heat stress. We show that these tadpoles have reduced activities of mitochondrial enzymes and altered metabolic rates compared to tadpoles colonized with a diverse microbiota, which could underlie differences in thermal phenotypes. Our results demonstrate, for the first time, a link between the gut microbiome of an ectothermic vertebrate and the hosts thermal tolerance, performance, and fitness, thus highlighting the importance of considering host-associated microbial communities when predicting species responses to climate change.
Matching journals
The top 7 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
- Temperature heterogeneity correlates with intraspecific variation in physiological flexibility in a small endotherm 94%
- Life-history adaptation under climate warming magnifies the agricultural footprint of a cosmopolitan insect pest 94%
- Bdelloid rotifers use hundreds of horizontally acquired genes against fungal pathogens 94%
Similar papers in this journal
- Diet induces parallel changes to host gut microbiota and problem solving performance in a wild bird. 95%
- Laboratory culture of the California Sea Firefly Vargula tsujii (Ostracoda: Cypridinidae): Developing a model system for the evolution of marine bioluminescence 94%
- The Gut Microbiome of Exudivorous Marmosets in the Wild and Captivity 94%
Similar papers in this journal
- Starvation Decreases Immunity and Immune Regulatory Factor NF-κB in the Starlet Sea Anemone Nematostella vectensis 94%
- Incorporation of microbially salvaged urea-nitrogen into anabolic amino acids during hibernation in arctic ground squirrels 94%
- Lifespan prolonging mechanisms and insulin upregulation without fat accumulation in long-lived reproductives of a higher termite 94%
Similar papers in this journal
"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.