NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2019: Untangling the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that shape gut microbiomes: Integrating behavior, microbes, and ecology

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This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will utilize biological collections in innovative ways. The gut microbiome is the community of bacteria that lives in an animal's gastrointestinal tracts. The microbiome helps shape the lives of their hosts across days, seasons, lifetimes, and generations. Captive wildlife, like those housed at zoos or research facilities, provide the opportunity to explore how the gut microbiome is controlled; however, compared to laboratory models, they remain untapped resources. The Biological Collections at the Duke Lemur Center (DLC), including a living primate colony and a tissue bank, are well suited to microbiome research. The fellow will use these biological collections to test how diet, and the specific consumption of foliage, shape the gut microbiome across leaf eaters, fruit eaters, and omnivores in primates. Ultimately, the value of this project is twofold: (1) It will create knowledge about what controls the gut microbiome in primates, with potential applied value to human healthcare and wildlife conservation; and (2) Through diverse sponsorship, the project will stimulate dialogue across scientific disciplines and will lead to the development of resources for the research community.The project will use Biological Collections to test the hypothesis that, compared to other feeding strategies, folivory more strongly drives host-microbiome coadaptation. In three studies, the fellow will probe how foliage consumption differentially drives gut-microbiome dynamics across folivorous, omnivorous, and frugivorous lemurs. Whereas the first study uses banked samples to compare microbiota along the species' gastrointestinal tracts, the second and third studies use the living colony, with study two asking how free-choice foraging shapes feeding and microbial ecology across seasonal scales, and study three using dietary manipulations to determine how cellulose and tannins regulate communities across daily scales. In addition to standard microbiome methods, during training residencies with sponsors Clayton and Eley, the fellow will develop metrics of dietary reconstruction from fecal samples via chloroplast sequencing, isotopic and wax-alkane analysis, and of microbiome dynamics via anaerobic and experimental culturing. The project is expected to yield research and review-style publications, and methodological descriptions. The fellow will mentor undergraduates throughout and work with the Duke Lemur Center's Education and Communication departments to create new materials for school children, the general public, and the social-media audience.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.