DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Patterns, causes, and consequences of gut microbial community variation across fish

生活在生物体内和生物体上的微生物群落可以强烈影响宿主的状况和健康。鱼类是最多样化的脊椎动物群体，但对鱼类的微生物成分或它们如何影响其生态和进化知之甚少。为了探索塑造鱼类微生物群落的因素，该项目使用三个主要模型系统研究了鱼类肠道细菌的变化：刺鱼，孔雀鱼和Tanganyikan慈鲷。这项工作旨在确定鱼类肠道微生物群落如何响应饮食，营养水平和栖息地的变化而发生变化，并确定鱼类如何适应（即，不同的饲养生态）可以反馈并影响其环境中的微生物群落。刺鱼和孔雀鱼的实验方法将研究由于饮食和栖息地以及鱼类生态对环境中细菌群落的影响而导致的肠道微生物的变异性。对慈鲷的研究将调查肠道微生物群落的大规模模式，这些微生物群落跨越具有不同饮食的多个相关物种。这项调查将解决进化历史和饮食在构建野生鱼类种群微生物群落中的作用，为未来研究其对鱼类生态学的功能贡献奠定基础。通过加强对野生鱼类典型肠道细菌群落的理解，这项研究还将为鱼类健康和生理学提供见解。PI将培训本科生，使用下一代测序技术，并将该项目产生的数据整合到本科生课程中。他们还将通过流行和同行评审的文章以及在科学会议上的演讲向公众传播研究结果。

The consortium of microbes that live in and on an organism can strongly influence the host's condition and fitness. Fish are the most diverse vertebrate group, but little is known about their microbial constituents of fish or how they impact their ecology and evolution. To explore factors that shape fish microbial communities, this project investigates the variation in gut bacteria across fish using three major model systems: sticklebacks, guppies and Tanganyikan cichlids. This work aims to determine how fish gut microbial communities have shifted in response to alterations in diet, trophic level, and habitat, and to determine how fish adaptations (i.e., to different feeding ecologies) may feed back and affect the microbial communities within their environment. An experimental approach with sticklebacks and guppies will investigate the variability of gut microbes due to diet and habitat as well as the impact of fish ecology on bacterial communities in the environment. The work on cichlids will investigate broad scale patterns of gut microbial communities across multiple, related species that have diverse diets. This investigation will address the role of evolutionary history and diet in structuring microbial communities across wild fish populations, laying groundwork for future studies on their functional contributions to fish ecology. By enhancing the understanding of what constitutes a typical gut bacterial community of wild fish, this research will also provide insights into fish health and physiology. The PIs will train undergraduates, use next-generation sequencing technologies, and integrate data generated from this project in undergraduate coursework. They will also disseminate findings to the public through popular and peer-reviewed articles and presentations at scientific meetings.