Infographic: Microbiome-Driven Adaptations in Animals

Researchers are using experiments and observational studies to look for host genetic variation that could be partly determined by the gut microbiota.

Written byCatherine Offord

| 2 min read

Save for Later

Listen with Speechify

0:00

2:00

ABOVE: © MICHELLE KONDRICH

Animals harbor vast numbers of microbes in their guts, but the effect of this community on the evolutionary trajectories of the hosts is unclear. Researchers are now using a combination of experiments and observational studies to look for signs of microbiome-driven host adaptation.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania split a large outbred population of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) into 14 groups of 20 individuals and put each group on a peach tree enclosed with a mesh cage. Each population was given Lactobacillus-laced food (left), Acetobacter-laced food (right), or food with no bacterial addition (not shown). After five generations, the team collected the flies for genomic sequencing and found that the groups differed depending on the food they’d been given. (Graphic illustrates one possible scenario for variation at a single locus.) Some of the observed changes in allele frequencies matched variation seen in wild fruit fly ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

Receive full access to digital editions of The Scientist, as well as TS Digest, feature stories, more than 35 years of archives, and much more!

Join for free today

Already a member? Login Here

Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
View Full Profile