Assessing age, breeding stage, and mating activity as drivers of variation in the reproductive microbiome of female tree swallows
| العنوان: | Assessing age, breeding stage, and mating activity as drivers of variation in the reproductive microbiome of female tree swallows |
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| المؤلفون: | Joel W. McGlothlin, Taryn Smith, Catherine Hucul, Jessica Hernandez, Ignacio T. Moore, Emily Reasor, David C. Haak, Lisa K. Belden |
| المساهمون: | Biological Sciences, School of Plant and Environmental Sciences |
| المصدر: | Ecology and Evolution Ecology and Evolution, Vol 11, Iss 16, Pp 11398-11413 (2021) |
| بيانات النشر: | John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2021. |
| سنة النشر: | 2021 |
| مصطلحات موضوعية: | hormone implant, Ecology, Host (biology), Zoology, Context (language use), Biology, Brood, Diversity index, tree swallows, mating strategy, Alpha diversity, Microbiome, Species richness, Mating, extra‐pair paternity, reproductive microbiome, QH540-549.5, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Original Research |
| الوصف: | Sexually transmitted microbes are hypothesized to influence the evolution of reproductive strategies. Though frequently discussed in this context, our understanding of the reproductive microbiome is quite nascent. Indeed, testing this hypothesis first requires establishing a baseline understanding of the temporal dynamics of the reproductive microbiome and of how individual variation in reproductive behavior and age influence the assembly and maintenance of the reproductive microbiome as a whole. Here, we ask how mating activity, breeding stage, and age influence the reproductive microbiome. We use observational and experimental approaches to explain variation in the cloacal microbiome of free‐living, female tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor). Using microsatellite‐based parentage analyses, we determined the number of sires per brood (a proxy for female mating activity). We experimentally increased female sexual activity by administering exogenous 17ß‐estradiol. Lastly, we used bacterial 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing to characterize the cloacal microbiome. Neither the number of sires per brood nor the increased sexual activity of females significantly influenced female cloacal microbiome richness or community structure. Female age, however, was positively correlated with cloacal microbiome richness and influenced overall community structure. A hypothesis to explain these patterns is that the effect of sexual activity and the number of mates on variation in the cloacal microbiome manifests over an individual's lifetime. Additionally, we found that cloacal microbiome alpha diversity (Shannon Index, Faith's phylogenetic distance) decreased and community structure shifted between breeding stages. This is one of few studies to document within‐individual changes and age‐related differences in the cloacal microbiome across successive breeding stages. More broadly, our results contribute to our understanding of the role that host life history and behavior play in shaping the cloacal microbiomes of wild birds. In this paper, we ask the question: how do mating activity, breeding stage, and age influence female reproductive microbiomes? We address this question using observational and experimental approaches to explain both between‐ and within‐individual variation in the cloacal microbiome of free‐living, female birds that exhibit differences in extra‐pair paternity rates. We found that female age and breeding stage, but not number of mates or experimentally elevated sexual activity (via 17ß‐estradiol implants), significantly influenced cloacal microbiome alpha diversity and explained variation in bacterial community structure. |
| وصف الملف: | application/pdf |
| اللغة: | English |
| تدمد: | 2045-7758 |
| URL الوصول: | https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_dedup___::6a4d096e58b64d60bc5d77dacf2ef8c2 http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC8366841 |
| حقوق: | OPEN |
| رقم الأكسشن: | edsair.doi.dedup.....6a4d096e58b64d60bc5d77dacf2ef8c2 |
| قاعدة البيانات: | OpenAIRE |
| تدمد: | 20457758 |
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