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可以强烈地影响宿主的状况和健康状况。鱼是种类最多的脊椎动物，但人们对鱼的微生物成分或它们如何影响生态和进化知之甚少。为了探索影响鱼类微生物群落的因素，该项目使用了三个主要的模型系统：刺鱼、孔雀鱼和橘子鱼，研究了鱼类肠道细菌的变化。这项工作旨在确定鱼类肠道微生物群落如何随着食物、营养水平和栖息地的变化而变化，并确定鱼类适应(即对不同摄食生态)可能如何反馈和影响其环境中的微生物群落。刺鱼和孔雀鱼的实验方法将调查肠道微生物因食物和栖息地的变化以及鱼类生态对环境中细菌群落的影响。对慈鱼的研究将调查具有不同饮食的多个相关物种的肠道微生物群落的广泛模式。这项研究将探讨进化史和饮食在构建野生鱼类种群微生物群落中的作用，为未来研究它们对鱼类生态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组成的了解，这项研究还将为鱼类健康和生理提供见解。PI将培训本科生，使用下一代测序技术，并将这个项目产生的数据整合到本科课程中。他们还将在科学会议上通过受欢迎的和同行评议的文章和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.