Ecological factors, host characteristics and/or interactions among microbes may all shape the occurrence of microbes and the structure of microbial communities within organisms. In the past, disentangling these factors and determining their relative importance in shaping within-host microbiota communities has been hampered by analytical limitations to account for (dis)similar environmental preferences (‘environmental filtering’). Here we used a joint species distribution modelling (JSDM) approach to characterize the bacterial microbiota of one of the most important disease vectors in Europe, the sheep tick Ixodes ricinus, along ecological gradients in the Swiss Alps. Although our study captured extensive environmental variation along elevational clines, the explanatory power of such large-scale ecological factors was comparably weak, suggesting that tick-specific traits and behaviours, microhabitat and -climate experienced by ticks, and interactions among microbes play an important role in shaping tick microbial communities. Indeed, when accounting for shared environmental preferences, evidence for significant patterns of positive or negative co-occurrence among microbes was found, which is indicative of competition or facilitation processes. Signals of facilitation were observed primarily among human pathogens, leading to co-infection within ticks, whereas signals of competition were observed between the tick endosymbiont Spiroplasma and human pathogens. These findings highlight the important role of small-scale ecological variation and microbe-microbe interactions in shaping tick microbial communities and the dynamics of tick-borne disease.

Detecting interaction between species is notoriously difficult, and disentangling species associations in host-related gut communities is especially challenging. Nevertheless, due to contemporary methods, including metabarcoding and 16S sequencing, collecting observational data on community composition has become easier and much more common. We studied the previously collected datasets of intestinal bacterial microbiota and parasite compositions within longitudinally followed mouse lemurs by analysing the potential interactions with diversity metrics and novel joint species distribution modelling. Both methods showed statistical association between certain parasite species and bacterial microbiota composition. Unicellular Eimeria sp. had an effect on diversity of gut microbiota. The cestode Hymenolepis diminuta had negative associations with several bacterial orders, whereas closely related species Hymenolepis nana had positive associations with several bacterial orders. Our results reveal potential interactions between some, but not all, intestinal parasites and gut bacterial microbiota. Host variables contributed over half of the total variation explained with the model, and sex was the most important single host variable; especially with microbiota, there were sex-related differences in the community composition. This study shows how joint species distribution modelling can incorporate both within-host dynamics of several taxa and host characteristics to model potential interactions in intestinal community. These results provide new hypothesis for interactions between and among parasites and bacterial microbiota to be tested further with experimental studies.

Longitudinal sampling for intestinal microbiota in wild animals is difficult, leading to a lack of information on bacterial dynamics occurring in nature. We studied how the composition of microbiota communities changed temporally in free-ranging small primates, rufous mouse lemurs (Microcebus rufus). We marked and recaptured mouse lemurs during their mating season in Ranomafana National Park in southeastern mountainous rainforests of Madagascar for 2 years and determined the fecal microbiota compositions of these mouse lemurs with MiSeq sequencing. We collected 160 fecal samples from 71 animals and had two or more samples from 39 individuals. We found small, but statistically significant, effects of site and age on microbiota richness and diversity and effects of sex, year, and site on microbiota composition, while the within-year temporal trends were less clear. Within-host microbiota showed pervasive variation in intestinal bacterial community composition, especially during the second study year. We hypothesize that the biological properties of mouse lemurs, including their small body size and fast metabolism, may contribute to the temporal intraindividual-level variation, something that should be testable with more-extensive sampling regimes. IMPORTANCE While microbiome research has blossomed in recent years, there is a lack of longitudinal studies on microbiome dynamics on free-ranging hosts. To fill this gap, we followed mouse lemurs, which are small heterothermic primates, for 2 years. Most studied animals have shown microbiota to be stable over the life span of host individuals, but some previous research also found ample within-host variation in microbiota composition. Our study used a larger sample size than previous studies and a study setting well suited to track within-host variation in free-ranging mammals. Despite the overall microbiota stability at the population level, the microbiota of individual mouse lemurs can show large-scale changes in composition in time periods as short as 2 days, suggesting caution in inferring individual-level patterns from population-level data.

Genetics is a fast-developing field and it has been argued that genetics education is lagging behind. Genetics education has, for example, been suspected of indoctrinating strong genetic determinism. As the updating of the national upper secondary school curricula is about to start, we decided to study how the current curriculum manifests in Finnish biology textbooks. We studied the main four textbooks for historical gene models and definitions of genes using content analysis. Hybrid models were pervasive in textbooks. The textbooks expressed sometimes even strong genetic determinism, which might be linked to the dominance of older historical models in the textbooks. We also found instances of determinism which we call 'weak determinism': genes were depicted as more important factor than environment in relation to the expressed properties. Subsequently, there were no modern gene models found. We suggest gene models should be presented explicitly to reduce misconceptions about genes. We argue that genetics education needs to take more into account than environmental effects and there needs to be more emphasis on the temporal and developmental aspect of genotype-phenotype link. Specifically in Finland this could be done by a more explicit formulation of the national curriculum. IntroductionThere's a wide international pressure to re-examine the contents of genetics education (Dougherty, 2009;Mills Shaw, Van Horne, Zhang, & Boughman, 2008). The canonical contents in genetics in secondary schools usually start with Mendelian patterns of inheritance (Banet & Ayuso, 2000;Dougherty, 2009;Tsui & Treagust, 2010), but this has been questioned as both irrelevant to students' scientific literacy and potentially leading to false ideas of genetic determinism (Santos, Mariane, & El-Hani, 2012;Castéra, Bruguière, & Clément, 2008;Dougherty, 2010; but see Smith & Gericke, 2013 Tuomas Aivelo is PhD student in University of Helsinki. His PhD research is on longitudinal monitoring of parasite dynamics in mouse lemurs by next generation sequencing tools. He has also actively participated in research and development in biology education, including teacher training, development of learning materials and research on genetics education.Anna Uitto is professor of biology education at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on inquiry-based learning, concepts of biology and secondary school teachers' and students' interests and attitudes to biology and their self-efficacy beliefs in biology. She is also conducting research on the education for sustainable development.TUOMAS AIVELO

Despite metabarcoding being widely used to analyse bacterial community composition, its application in parasitological research remains limited. What interest there has been has focused on previously intractable research settings where traditional methods are inappropriate, for example, in longitudinal studies and studies involving endangered species. In settings such as these, non-invasive sampling combined with metabarcoding can provide a fast and accurate assessment of component communities. In this paper we review the use of metabarcoding in the study of helminth communities in wild mammals, outlining the necessary procedures from sample collection to statistical analysis. We highlight the limitations of the metabarcoding approach and speculate on what type of parasitological study would benefit from such methods in the future.

Background Investigations of evolution knowledge and acceptance and their relation are central to evolution education research. Ambiguous results in this field of study demonstrate a variety of measuring issues, for instance differently theorized constructs, or a lack of standardized methods, especially for cross-country comparisons. In particular, meaningful comparisons across European countries, with their varying cultural backgrounds and education systems, are rare, often include only few countries, and lack standardization. To address these deficits, we conducted a standardized European survey, on 9200 first-year university students in 26 European countries utilizing a validated, comprehensive questionnaire, the “Evolution Education Questionnaire”, to assess evolution acceptance and knowledge, as well as influencing factors on evolution acceptance. Results We found that, despite European countries’ different cultural backgrounds and education systems, European first-year university students generally accept evolution. At the same time, they lack substantial knowledge about it, even if they are enrolled in a biology-related study program. Additionally, we developed a multilevel-model that determines religious faith as the main influencing factor in accepting evolution. According to our model, knowledge about evolution and interest in biological topics also increase acceptance of evolution, but to a much lesser extent than religious faith. The effect of age and sex, as well as the country’s affiliation, students’ denomination, and whether or not a student is enrolled in a biology-related university program, is negligible. Conclusions Our findings indicate that, despite all their differences, most of the European education systems for upper secondary education lead to acceptance of evolution at least in university students. It appears that, at least in this sample, the differences in knowledge between countries reflect neither the extent to which school curricula cover evolutionary biology nor the percentage of biology-related students in the country samples. Future studies should investigate the role of different European school curricula, identify particularly problematic or underrepresented evolutionary concepts in biology education, and analyze the role of religious faith when teaching evolution.

While it is known that intestinal parasite communities vary in their composition over time, there is a lack of studies addressing how variation in component communities (between-hosts) manifests in infracommunities (within-host) during the host lifespan. In this study, we investigate the changes in the intestinal parasite infracommunities in wild-living rufous mouse lemurs (Microcebus rufus) from Ranomafana National Park in southeastern Madagascar from 2010 to 2012. We used high-throughput barcoding of the 18S rRNA gene to interrogate parasite community structure. Our results show that in these nematode communities, there were two frequently occurring putative species and four rarer putative species. All putative species were randomly distributed over host individuals and they did not occur in clear temporal patterns. For the individuals caught in at least two different years, there was high turnover of putative species and high variation in fecal egg counts. Our study shows that while there was remarkable variation in infracommunities over time, the component community was relatively stable. Nevertheless, the patterns of prevalence varied substantially between years in each component community.

Citizen science is a valuable tool in environmental and formal education in creating scientific knowledge for the researchers and facilitating learning and fostering a positive relationship toward the environment and study species. We present a case study on the Helsinki Urban Rat Project in which students surveyed rat occurrence in their own near environments. According to our results, experientiality, involvement, meaningfulness, freedom to choose, ease of participation, and the rats themselves contributed to students' increased interest in participation. Furthermore, students described diverse factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge that they acquired during their participation. In general, students described negative attitudes toward rats, but they described fewer negative views on rats after participation. We reflect on the success of the citizen science project and implications of planning a future citizen science project and incorporating citizen science in formal education.