Improving the assessment of ecosystem and wildlife health: microbiome as an early indicator

Ribas, M.; García-Ulloa, Manuel; Espunyes, Johan; Cabezón, Óscar

doi:10.1016/j.copbio.2023.102923

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Climate change and infectious diseases have led to population declines of animals and plants thereby threatening ecosystem biodiversity [1][2][3][4]. Host-associated microbial communities have the potential to rapidly respond to biotic and abiotic disturbance, thus providing meaningful early indicators of ecosystem and host health [14,16,55]. Studying the general response of resident microbiomes to temperature changes and infection together could shed light on the persistence of host species in a changing world.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Amidst climate change, hosts and their microbiomes are commonly exposed to stressful temperatures. Microbiome changes, particularly patterns of dispersion and instability, have been linked with animal host health [14,28,30,59].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Accumulating evidence shows that host health in the face of changing temperatures can be mediated by host microbiomes [8,9] and parasite infection [10,11]. Microbiomes are highly sensitive to biotic or abiotic disturbances [12][13][14]. Changes in microbiome structure and stability, as a result, are increasingly recognized as meaningful indicators of altered host health [12,13,15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Changes in microbiome structure and stability, as a result, are increasingly recognized as meaningful indicators of altered host health [ 12 , 13 , 15 ]. Studying microbiome dynamics under warming and infection scenarios provides important predictions of species persistence under climate change and infectious diseases [ 12 , 14 , 16 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dual stressors of infection and warming can destabilize host microbiomes

Li,

Gao,

Stevens

et al. 2024

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Climate change is causing extreme heating events and intensifying infectious disease outbreaks. Animals harbour microbial communities, which are vital for their survival and fitness under stressful conditions. Understanding how microbiome structures change in response to infection and warming may be important for forecasting host performance under global change. Here, we evaluated alterations in the microbiomes of several wild Caenorhabditis elegans isolates spanning a range of latitudes, upon warming temperatures and infection by the parasite Leucobacter musarum . Using 16S rRNA sequencing, we found that microbiome diversity decreased, and dispersion increased over time, with the former being more prominent in uninfected adults and the latter aggravated by infection. Infection reduced dominance of specific microbial taxa, and increased microbiome dispersion, indicating destabilizing effects on host microbial communities. Exposing infected hosts to warming did not have an additive destabilizing effect on their microbiomes. Moreover, warming during pre-adult development alleviated the destabilizing effects of infection on host microbiomes. These results revealed an opposing interaction between biotic and abiotic factors on microbiome structure. Lastly, we showed that increased microbiome dispersion might be associated with decreased variability in microbial species interaction strength. Overall, these findings improve our understanding of animal microbiome dynamics amidst concurrent climate change and epidemics. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Sculpting the microbiome: how host factors determine and respond to microbial colonization’.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Dual stressors of infection and warming can destabilize host microbiomes

Li,

Gao,

Stevens

et al. 2024

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…It has also been shown that the presence of pollutants reduces the abundance and diversity of microorganisms (Kandeler et al, 1996;Sutton et al, 2013). There is a growing consensus (Ribas et al 2023) that disturbances of the microbiome frequently lead to alterations, such as 1) an overall decrease in alpha-diversity (diversity of species), 2) an increase in beta-diversity (variability between samples or environments), 3) a decrease in beneficial and/or an increase in pathogenic or disease-associated bacteria, 4) a modification of the balance between generalist and specialist bacteria, and 5) an increase in the abundance of microbial resistance genes.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Roadmap for the integration of environmental microbiomes in risk assessments under EFSA's remit

Debode,

Caulier,

Demeter

et al. 2024

EFSA Supporting Publications

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Environmental microbiomes roadmap www.efsa.europa.eu/publications EFSA Supporting publication 2024:EN-8602The present document has been produced and adopted by the bodies identified above as author(s). In accordance with Article 36 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, this task has been carried out exclusively by the author(s) in the context of a grant agreement between the European Food Safety Authority and the author(s). The present document is published complying with the transparency principle to which the Authority is subject. It cannot be considered as an output adopted by the Authority. The European Food Safety Authority reserves its rights, view and position as regards the issues addressed and the conclusions reached in the present document, without prejudice to the rights of the authors.

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Temporal patterns of gut microbiota in lemurs (Eulemur rubriventer) living in intact and disturbed habitats in a novel sample type

Grieneisen,

Hays,

Cook

et al. 2024

American J Primatol

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The gut microbiome is a plastic phenotype; gut microbial composition is highly variable across an individual host's lifetime and between host social groups, and this variation has consequences for host health. However, we do not yet fully understand how longitudinal microbial dynamics and their social drivers may be influenced by ecological stressors, such as habitat degradation. Answering these questions is difficult in most wild animal systems, as it requires long‐term collections of matched host, microbiome, and environmental trait data. To test if temporal and social influences on microbiome composition differ by the history of human disturbance, we leveraged banked, desiccated fecal samples collected over 5 months in 2004 from two ecologically distinct populations of wild, red‐bellied lemurs (Eulemur rubriventer) that are part of a long‐term study system. We found that social group explained more variation in microbiome composition than host population membership did, and that temporal variation in common microbial taxa was similar between populations, despite differences in history of human disturbance. Furthermore, we found that social group membership and collection month were both more important than individual lemur identity. Taken together, our results suggest that synchronized environments use can lead to synchronized microbial dynamics over time, even between habitats of varying quality, and that desiccated samples could become a viable approach for studying primate gut microbiota. Our work opens the door for other projects to utilize historic biological sample data sets to answer novel temporal microbiome questions in an ecological context.

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Improving the assessment of ecosystem and wildlife health: microbiome as an early indicator

Cited by 8 publications

References 59 publications

Dual stressors of infection and warming can destabilize host microbiomes

Dual stressors of infection and warming can destabilize host microbiomes

Roadmap for the integration of environmental microbiomes in risk assessments under EFSA's remit

Temporal patterns of gut microbiota in lemurs (Eulemur rubriventer) living in intact and disturbed habitats in a novel sample type

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