Structure and ontogenetic development of gut microbial communities
Understanding microbial dynamics is valuable to both advancing ecological theory and applicable to human and animal health. Gut microbes can influence a host’s growth, metabolism, nutrition, and reproduction. As much as we want to know how we can apply knowledge of gut microbiota to our own health needs, fundamental questions about microbial community assembly, diversity, and persistence are still unanswered. By integrating microbiology with community ecology, we can leverage established ecological theories to characterize the relationships between microbes and their hosts.
The goal of community ecology is to explain patterns of species distributions, abundances, and interactions. If we view hosts as patches of habitat, we can begin to understand how certain habitat characteristics filter microbial communities and how these communities change over space and time.
Hosts may shift their diet during different developmental stages throughout their lifetime. For example, the food you consumed as a newborn is different than what you are eating today. By focusing on the interaction between diet and life stage, we can capture the dynamic nature of gut microbial communities.
In collaboration with Richard Svänback at Uppsala University in Sweden, I am using signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus*) as a model organism to understand the structure of microbial communities over different life stages of their host.
*Crayfish plague, a fungal pathogen, caused major declines in noble crayfish, which are native to Sweden. Signal crayfish (the same ones found in Oregon) were introduced to Sweden in the 1960’s to supplement the crayfish fishery. Unfortunately signal crayfish are carriers of crayfish plague and there are many conservation and restoration efforts to bring back the noble crayfish today.