The reproductive microbiome and maternal transmission of microbiota via eggs in Sceloporus virgatus.

Maternal transmission of microbes occurs across the animal kingdom and is vital for offspring development and long-term health. The mechanisms of this transfer are most well-studied in humans and other mammals but are less well-understood in egg-laying animals, especially those with no parental care. Here, we investigate the transfer of maternal microbes in the oviparous phrynosomatid lizard, Sceloporus virgatus.

Inter- and intrapopulation resource use variation of marine subsidized western fence lizards.

Marine resource subsidies alter consumer dynamics of recipient populations in coastal systems. The response to these subsidies by generalist consumers is often not uniform, creating inter- and intrapopulation diet variation and niche diversification that may be intensified across heterogeneous landscapes. We sampled western fence lizards, Sceloporus occidentalis, from Puget Sound beaches and coastal and inland forest habitats, in addition to the lizards' marine and terrestrial prey items to quantify marine and terrestrial resource use with stable isotope analysis and mixing models.

Cloacal microbiomes of sympatric and allopatric Sceloporus lizards vary with environment and host relatedness.

Animals and their microbiomes exert reciprocal influence; the host's environment, physiology, and phylogeny can impact the composition of the microbiome, while the microbes present can affect host behavior, health, and fitness. While some microbiomes are highly malleable, specialized microbiomes that provide important functions can be more robust to environmental perturbations. Recent evidence suggests Sceloporus virgatus has one such specialized microbiome, which functions to protect eggs from fungal pathogens during incubation.

Wild microbiomes of striped plateau lizards vary with reproductive season, sex, and body size.

Long-term studies of animal microbiomes under natural conditions are valuable for understanding the effects of host demographics and environmental factors on host-associated microbial communities, and how those effects interact and shift over time. We examined how the cloacal microbiome of wild Sceloporus virgatus (the striped plateau lizard) varies under natural conditions in a multi-year study. Cloacal swabs were collected from wild-caught lizards across their entire active season and over three years in southeastern Arizona, USA.

Recovered microbiome of an oviparous lizard differs across gut and reproductive tissues, cloacal swabs, and faeces.

Microbial diversity and community function are related, and can be highly specialized in different gut regions. The cloacal microbiome of Sceloporus virgatus females provides antifungal protection to eggshells, a specialized function that suggests a specialized microbiome. Here, we describe the cloacal, intestinal, and oviductal microbiome from S.

Parallel Evolution in the Integration of a Co-obligate Aphid Symbiosis.

Insects evolve dependence-often extreme-on microbes for nutrition. This includes cases in which insects harbor multiple endosymbionts that function collectively as a metabolic unit [1-5]. How do these dependences originate [6], and is there a predictable sequence of events leading to the integration of new symbionts? While co-obligate symbioses, in which hosts rely on multiple nutrient-provisioning symbionts, have evolved numerous times across sap-feeding insects, there is only one known case in aphids, involving Buchnera aphidicola and Serratia symbiotica in the Lachninae subfamily [7-9].

Dynamic and Asymmetric Changes of the Microbial Communities after Cohousing in Laboratory Mice.

Horizontal transmission of the microbiota between different individuals is widely used to normalize the microbiota in laboratory mice. However, little is known about the dynamics of microbial communities and the level of microbiota transmission after cohousing. We extensively analyzed the fecal microbiota in Jackson and Taconic C57BL/6 mice to study horizontal transmission after weaning.