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

野生动物以积极和消极的方式影响社会。例如，驼鹿对猎人和游客来说具有经济和文化价值，但驼鹿数量过多会破坏庄稼，危及驾驶者。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普遍了解。结果将指导有关管理濒危、过度丰富和外来物种的决策。研究人员将与怀俄明州的州和地方机构合作，制定监测野生动物栖息地和营养状况的计划。调查结果将与野生动物迁徙倡议组织合作向公众公布。该项目将促进对早期职业研究人员的培训，并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8个不同植物丰度的驼鹿种群的饮食和消化生理进行研究。研究人员将测量饲料植物的丰度，以及体脂和繁殖水平，这表明有多少饲料是可用的。每个种群的粪便样本将用于量化饮食。通过对粪便进行DNA分析，可以确定驼鹿个体及其性别。对植物供应、体脂、繁殖和饮食的测量将表明驼鹿是否会在特定植物稀缺时调整其饮食。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。驼鹿在食物匮乏时改变饮食的能力可能取决于它们的肠道微生物适应新饮食的能力。另一个有待验证的假设是，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。该项目的结果将促进对粮食供应如何驱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.