A Symbiotic Approach to the Study of Animal Communication

动物体内含有数十亿的细菌，其中大部分有益于动物宿主的健康。目前，共生细菌对其动物宿主行为的影响在很大程度上仍未被探索。共生细菌在动物交流中，特别是在哺乳动物中，可能占有重要地位。许多哺乳动物通过气味标记与专门腺体的产物进行交流。这些腺体非常有利于细菌增殖，并且已经假定细菌产生的挥发性气味被它们的宿主用于通信。该项目使用当前的见解和微生物生态学工具来阐明共生细菌对斑点鬣狗气味标记系统的影响，斑点鬣狗是一种在撒哈拉以南非洲发现的社会复杂的大型食肉动物。在肯尼亚用鬣狗进行的气味辨别实验将说明鬣狗气味标记的信息内容。化学分析将进一步说明其标记的信息内容，并揭示这些信息是如何被化学编码的。对相同气味标记进行的不依赖培养的分子调查将表明共生细菌群落的变异是否是气味标记中信息编码的基础。最后，现代培养技术将被用来隔离气味腺细菌群落的主要成员，并确定它们是否产生气味，如化学分析所示，可能编码气味标记中的信息。该项目将提高我们对细菌在哺乳动物化学通讯系统中的潜在作用的理解。该项目将涉及跨学科的本科生培训，将分子生物学的前沿进展融入动物行为研究。它将使公众能够从一个全新的共生环境中获得100多万个分子序列，并将促进多学科合作，以建立一个中央在线数据库，使人们能够快速获得共生系统中的分子序列。这个项目应该是变革性的，开辟了一个丰富的新研究领域，改变了我们对共生细菌及其动物宿主行为的看法。

Animals contain billions of bacteria and most benefit the health of their animal hosts. Currently, the effects of symbiotic bacteria on the behavior of their animal hosts remain largely unexplored. Symbiotic bacteria potentially figure prominently in animal communication, especially among mammals. Many mammals communicate by scent-marking with products of specialized glands. These glands are highly conducive to bacterial proliferation, and it has been postulated that the volatile odorants the bacteria generate are used by their hosts in communication. This project uses current insights and tools of microbial ecology to elucidate the effects of symbiotic bacteria on the scent-marking system of the spotted hyena, a socially complex large carnivore found throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Scent discrimination experiments with hyenas in Kenya will illustrate the information content of hyenas' scent-marks. Chemical analyses will further illustrate the information content of their marks and also reveal how that information is chemically coded. Culture-independent molecular surveys of the same scent-marks will indicate whether variation in symbiotic bacterial communities underlies the coding of information in scent-marks. Lastly, contemporary culturing techniques will be used to isolate prominent members of scent gland bacterial communities, and to ascertain whether they produce the odorants that, as indicated by the chemical analyses, likely code information in scent-marks. This project will enhance our understanding of the potential roles of bacteria in mammalian chemical communication systems. The project will involve the training of undergraduates across disciplinary boundaries, integrating cutting-edge advances in molecular biology into animal behavior research. It will result in public access to over one million molecular sequences from an entirely novel symbiotic environment, and should stimulate multi-disciplinary partnerships to generate a central online database enabling rapid access to molecular sequences from symbiotic systems. This project should be transformative, opening up a rich new field of study and altering our perceptions of symbiotic bacteria and the behavior of their animal hosts.