Early-life disruption of amphibian microbiota decreases later-life resistance to parasites

Sarah A. Knutie (), Christina L. Wilkinson, Kevin D. Kohl and Jason R. Rohr
Additional contact information
Sarah A. Knutie: University of South Florida
Christina L. Wilkinson: University of South Florida
Kevin D. Kohl: Vanderbilt University
Jason R. Rohr: University of South Florida

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Changes in the early-life microbiota of hosts might affect infectious disease risk throughout life, if such disruptions during formative times alter immune system development. Here, we test whether an early-life disruption of host-associated microbiota affects later-life resistance to infections by manipulating the microbiota of tadpoles and challenging them with parasitic gut worms as adults. We find that tadpole bacterial diversity is negatively correlated with parasite establishment in adult frogs: adult frogs that had reduced bacterial diversity as tadpoles have three times more worms than adults without their microbiota manipulated as tadpoles. In contrast, adult bacterial diversity during parasite exposure is not correlated with parasite establishment in adult frogs. Thus, in this experimental setup, an early-life disruption of the microbiota has lasting reductions on host resistance to infections, which is possibly mediated by its effects on immune system development. Our results support the idea that preventing early-life disruption of host-associated microbiota might confer protection against diseases later in life.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00119-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-017-00119-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00119-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().