“…Mihaljevic, Hoye, and Johnson () extended this to also consider the role of alternate host species, in conjunction with environmental factors, in shaping symbiont communities across populations of a focal host species. Within a host species, the spatial and hierarchical structure of social interactions was also shown to shape the transmission of individual microbes (and disease susceptibility) in populations (Keiser, Pinter‐Wollman, Ziemba, Kothamasu, & Pruitt, ; Keiser et al., ; Raulo, ), as were several different types of indirect interactions. For instance, parents were found to play a role in shaping the gut microbiota of their offspring even when they were separated from them in space and time, through diapause (Mushegian, Walser, Sullam, & Ebert, ), and to play an active role in modifying the microbiota on the external surface of other (dead) animals in preparing a carcass for their larval offspring (Duarte, Welch, Swannack, Wagner, & Kilner, ).…”