Sustained Drought, but Not Short-Term Warming, Alters the Gut Microbiomes of Wild Anolis Lizards
Abstract
As climate change progresses, it is crucial to understand how animals will respond to shifts in their local environments. One component of this response involves changes in the microbial communities living in and on host organisms. ABSTRACT As rising temperatures threaten biodiversity across the globe, tropical ectotherms are thought to be particularly vulnerable due to their narrow thermal tolerance ranges. Nevertheless, physiology-based models highlighting the vulnerability of tropical organisms rarely consider the contributions of their gut microbiota, even though microbiomes influence numerous host traits, including thermal tolerance. We combined field and lab experiments to understand the response of the slender anole lizard (Anolis apletophallus) gut microbiome to climatic shifts of various magnitude and duration. First, to examine the effects of long-term climate warming in the wild, we transplanted lizards from the mainland Panama to a series of warmer islands in the Panama Canal and compared their gut microbiome compositions after three generations of divergence. Next, we mimicked the effects of a short-term “heat-wave” by using a greenhouse experiment and explored the link between gut microbiome composition and lizard thermal physiology. Finally, we examined variation in gut microbiomes in our mainland population in the years both before and after a naturally occurring drought. Our results suggest that slender anole microbiomes are surprisingly resilient to…
Read the paper
Related studies
- Bile Acid 7α-Dehydroxylating Gut Bacteria Secrete Antibiotics that Inhibit Clostridium difficile: Role of Secondary Bile Acids
- Ketogenic diet alleviates colitis by reduction of colonic group 3 innate lymphoid cells through altering gut microbiome
- Altered gut microbiome composition and function are associated with gut barrier dysfunction in healthy relatives of patients with Crohn's disease
- Diet, obesity, and the gut microbiome as determinants modulating metabolic outcomes in a non-human primate model
- Immune Impairment Associated with Vitamin A Deficiency: Insights from Clinical Studies and Animal Model Research
- Glyphosate-based herbicides influence antioxidants, reproductive hormones and gut microbiome but not reproduction: A long-term experiment in an avian model
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.