DISSERTATION RESEARCH: The role of the gut microbiome in individual specialization and population-level niche partitioning

野生动物对社会的影响有正面的也有负面的。例如，驼鹿对猎人和游客具有经济和文化价值，但驼鹿数量过多可能会破坏庄稼，危及驾车者。该项目将研究食物供应如何影响驼鹿数量的增长和下降，并促进对一个地区可以支持的动物数量的总体理解。结果将指导有关管理濒危物种、过剩物种和外来物种的决策。研究人员将与怀俄明州和当地机构合作，制定监测野生动物栖息地和营养状况的计划。结果将与野生动物迁徙倡议合作向公众公布。该项目既将促进对早期职业研究人员的培训，又将生产新的工具来估计野生动物种群的食物限制。这些工具将提供给怀俄明州、蒙大拿州、科罗拉多州、爱达荷州、犹他州和华盛顿州的州管理机构。该项目将对经历不同植物丰度水平的八个种群的驼鹿的饮食和消化生理进行表征。研究人员将测量饲料植物的丰度，以及身体脂肪和繁殖的水平，这表明有多少饲料可用。来自每个种群的粪便样本将被用于量化饮食。粪便的DNA分析将确定单个驼鹿和它们的性别。对植物可获得性、身体脂肪、繁殖和饮食的衡量将证明，当特定植物变得稀缺时，驼鹿是否会调整它们的饮食。驼鹿和其他大型食草动物是反刍动物，依靠高度专业化的肠道培养微生物来消化其他动物无法消化的植物纤维和毒素。当食物变得稀缺时，驼鹿改变饮食的能力可能取决于它们肠道微生物适应新饮食的能力。将被检验的另一种假设是，驼鹿的饮食和它们的肠道微生物是遗传的，对食物供应的变化具有抵抗力。为了回答这些问题，在粪便中发现的微生物DNA将被用来量化肠道微生物、个体驼鹿的遗传相关性和驼鹿饮食之间的关系。该项目的成果将促进人们对粮食供应如何推动人口增加或减少的理解。

Wildlife affect society in positive and negative ways. For example, moose have economic and cultural value for hunters and for tourists, but overabundant populations of moose can destroy crops and endanger motorists. This project will examine how food availability affects moose population growth and decline and advance general understanding of the number of animals an area can support. Results will guide decisions about managing endangered, overabundant, and alien species. The researchers will work with state and local agencies in Wyoming to develop programs to monitor wildlife habitat and nutritional conditions. Results will be communicated to the public in partnership with the Wildlife Migration Initiative. The project will both advance training of an early career researcher and produce new tools to estimate food limitation for wildlife populations. These tools will be available to state management agencies throughout Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Washington. This project will characterize diet and the digestive physiology of moose across eight populations experiencing different levels of plant abundance. Investigators will measure abundance of forage plants along with levels of body fat and reproduction, which indicate how much forage is available. Fecal samples from each population will be used to quantify diet. DNA analyses of feces will identify individual moose and their gender. Measures of plant availability, body fat, reproduction and diet will demonstrate if moose adjust their diets when particular plants becomes scarce. Moose and other large herbivores are ruminants, relying on highly specialized guts that cultivate microbes to digest plant fibers and toxins that other animals cannot. The ability of moose to shift their diets when food becomes scarce may depend on the ability of their gut microbes to accommodate new diets. The alternate hypothesis that will be tested is that moose diets and their gut microbes are inherited and are resistant to changes in food availability. To answer these questions, microbial DNA found in feces will be used to quantify the relationship between gut microbes, the genetic relatedness of individual moose, and moose diets. Results of this project will advance understanding of how food supply drives population increase or decline.