Abstract
The gut microbiome has important consequences for fitness, yet the complex, interactive nature of ecological factors that influence the gut microbiome has scarcely been investigated in natural populations. We sampled the gut microbiota of wild great tits (Parus major) at different life stages and across multiple conifer and mixed woodland fragments, allowing us to evaluate multiple factors that relate to within-individual gut microbiota acquisition, including habitat type, nest position and life history traits. The gut microbiota varied with both environment and life-history in ways that were largely dependent on age. Notably, it was the nestling, as opposed to the adult gut microbiota that was most sensitive to ecological variation, pointing to a high degree of developmental plasticity. Individual nestling differences in gut microbiota were consistently different (repeatable) from one to two weeks of life, driven entirely by the effect of sharing the same nest. Our findings point to important early developmental windows in which the gut microbiota are most sensitive to environmental variation and suggest reproductive timing, and hence parental quality or food availability, interact with the microbiome.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
Authorship: G.L.D., C.S., R.P.R. and J.L.Q. conceived the ideas and designed the methodology; G.L.D., J.M.S.C and M.S.R. collected the field data; G.L.D., and C.N.J. carried out the DNA extraction and library prep; S.E.S. analysed the data; S.E.S., G.L.D. and J.L.Q wrote the manuscript with input from all authors. All authors gave final approval for publication.
https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.bk3j9kd9g