Exposure to foreign gut microbiota can facilitate rapid dietary shifts

Dietary niche is fundamental for determining species ecology; thus, a detailed understanding of what drives variation in dietary niche is vital for predicting ecological shifts and could have implications for species management. Gut microbiota can be important for determining an organism’s dietary p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2021-08, Vol.11 (1), p.16791-16791, Article 16791
Main Authors: Heys, C., Fisher, A. M., Dewhurst, A. D., Lewis, Z., Lizé, A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/158
631/181
Aversion
Biodiversity and Ecology
Environmental Sciences
Food resources
Humanities and Social Sciences
Ingestion
Intestinal microflora
Microbiota
multidisciplinary
Niches
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Species
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Summary:Dietary niche is fundamental for determining species ecology; thus, a detailed understanding of what drives variation in dietary niche is vital for predicting ecological shifts and could have implications for species management. Gut microbiota can be important for determining an organism’s dietary preference, and therefore which food resources they are likely to exploit. Evidence for whether the composition of the gut microbiota is plastic in response to changes in diet is mixed. Also, the extent to which dietary preference can be changed following colonisation by new gut microbiota from different species is unknown. Here, we use Drosophila spp. to show that: (1) the composition of an individual’s gut microbiota can change in response to dietary changes, and (2) ingestion of foreign gut microbes can cause individuals to be attracted to food types they previously had a strong aversion to. Thus, we expose a mechanism for facilitating rapid shifts in dietary niche over short evolutionary timescales.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-96324-5