Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Microbiology
Scaling up and down: movement ecology for microorganisms
Published: 2022-06-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Movement is critical for the fitness of organisms, both large and small. It dictates how individuals acquire resources, evade predators, exchange genetic material, and respond to stressful environments. Movement also influences ecological and evolutionary dynamics at scales beyond the individual organism. However, the links between individual motility and the processes that generate and maintain [...]
A minimum data standard for vector competence experiments
Published: 2022-06-15
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Entomology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Virology
The growing threat of vector-borne diseases, highlighted by recent epidemics, has prompted increased focus on the fundamental biology of vector-virus interactions. To this end, experiments are often the most reliable way to measure vector competence (the potential for arthropod vectors to transmit certain pathogens). Data from these experiments are critical to understand outbreak risk, but – [...]
Gut microbiota repeatability is contingent on temporal scale and age in wild meerkats
Published: 2022-03-29
Subjects: Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Microbiology
Inter-individual differences in gut microbiota composition are hypothesized to generate variation in host fitness – a premise for the evolution of host-gut microbe symbioses. However, recent evidence suggests that gut microbial communities are highly dynamic, challenging the notion that individuals harbour unique and stable gut microbial phenotypes. Leveraging a long-term dataset of wild [...]
The Global Forest Health Crisis: A Public Good Social Dilemma in Need of International Collective Action
Published: 2022-03-11
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Behavioral Economics, Biodiversity, Biology, Biosecurity, Botany, Economics, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, International Relations, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Biology, Plant Pathology, Plant Sciences, Political Science, Science and Technology Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Society is confronted by interconnected threats to ecological sustainability. Among these is the devastation of forests by destructive non-native pathogens and insects introduced through global trade, leading to the loss of critical ecosystem services and a global forest health crisis. We argue that the forest health crisis is a public good social dilemma and propose a response framework that [...]
New insight into colonies of Microcystis (Cyanobacteria) as multi-specific floating biofilms
Published: 2022-01-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology
The ability to form biofilms is a functional trait shared by many bacterial species. Biofilms provide bacteria a sheltered environment where the nutrients and oxygen gradients create a heterogeneous matrix and promote cells to differentiate their metabolism and functions according to the position they occupy inside the matrix. Species of the Microcystis genus are among the most common [...]
Source and seasonality of epizootic mycoplasmosis in free-ranging pronghorn (Antilocapra americana)
Published: 2021-12-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine
Mycoplasma bovis is an economically important bacterial pathogen of cattle and bison that most commonly causes pneumonia, polyarthritis and mastitis. M. bovis is prevalent in cattle and commercial bison; however, infections in other species are rare. In early 2019, we identified M. bovis in free-ranging pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) in northeastern Wyoming, USA. Here we report on additional [...]
Selfish, promiscuous, and sometimes useful: how mobile genetic elements drive horizontal gene transfer in microbial populations
Published: 2021-12-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Microbiology
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) drives microbial adaptation but is often under the control of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) whose interests are not necessarily aligned with those of their hosts. In general, transfer is costly to the donor cell while potentially beneficial to the recipients. The diversity and plasticity of cell-MGEs interactions, and those among MGEs, results in complex [...]
Microbiotic particles in water and soil, water-soil microbiota coalescences, and antimicrobial resistance
Published: 2021-12-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology
Bacterial organisms like surfaces. Water and soil contain a multiplicity of particulated material where bacterial populations and communities might attach. Microbiotic particles refers to any type of small particles (less than 2 mm) where bacteria (and other microbes) might attach, resulting in medium- long-term colonization. In this work, the interactions of bacterial organisms with microbiotic [...]
Impact of heat stress on the fitness outcomes of symbiotic infection in aphids: a meta-analysis
Published: 2021-11-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Microbiology
Beneficial microorganisms shape the evolutionary trajectories of their hosts, facilitating or constraining the colonization of new ecological niches. One convincing example entails the responses of insect-microbe associations to rising temperatures. Indeed, the insect resilience to stressful high temperatures depends on the genetic identity of the obligate symbiont and the presence of heat [...]
Many defense systems in microbial genomes, but which is defending whom from what?
Published: 2021-09-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Microbiology
Prokaryotes have numerous mobile genetic elements (MGE) that mediate horizontal gene transfer between cells. These elements can be costly, even deadly, and cells use numerous defense systems to filter, control or inactivate them. Surprisingly, many phages, conjugative plasmids, and their parasites, phage satellites or mobilizable plasmids, encode defense systems homologous to those of bacteria. [...]
Glucocorticoids coordinate changes in gut microbiome composition in wild North American red squirrels
Published: 2021-09-17
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Microbiology
Gut microbiome diversity plays an important role in host health and fitness, in part through the diversification of gut metabolic function and pathogen protection. Elevations in glucocorticoids (GCs) appear to reduce gut microbiome diversity in experimental studies, suggesting that a loss of microbial diversity may be a negative consequence of increased GCs. However, given that ecological factors [...]
Allogenous Selection of Mutational Collateral Resistance: Old Drugs Select for New Resistances Within Antibiotic Families
Published: 2021-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology
Allogeneous selection occurs when an antibiotic selects for resistance to more advanced members of the same family. The mechanisms of allogenous selection are (a) collateral expansion, when the antibiotic expands the gene and gene-containing bacterial populations favoring the emergence of other mutations, inactivating the more advanced antibiotics; (b) collateral selection, when the old [...]
Plant herbivore protection by arbuscular mycorrhizas: A role for fungal diversity?
Published: 2021-07-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences
The symbiotic association between arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and terrestrial plants can enhance plant defences against insect herbivores. Despite advances in our understanding of how AM fungi affect plant tolerance and resistance based defence mechanisms, we contend that the role of fungal diversity in these interactions continues to be largely overlooked. This is problematic considering [...]
Impact of Infectious Disease on Humans and Our Origins
Published: 2021-06-19
Subjects: Anthropology, Archaeological Anthropology, Arts and Humanities, Bacteriology, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Biological Phenomena, Cell Phenomena, and Immunity, Cell and Developmental Biology, Cell Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetic Phenomena, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology, Life Sciences, Medical Biochemistry, Medical Cell Biology, Medical Genetics, Medical Immunology, Medical Microbiology, Medical Molecular Biology, Medical Pathology, Medical Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics, Pathogenic Microbiology, Pharmacology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Virology
On May 16, 2020, the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny organized the symposium “Impact of Infectious Disease on Humans and Our Origins”. The symposium aimed to gather experts on infectious diseases in one place and discuss the interrelationship between different pathogens and humans in an evolutionary context. The talks discussed topics including SARS-CoV-2, dengue and [...]
The macroevolutionary consequences of niche construction in microbial metabolism
Published: 2021-06-01
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Population Biology, Systems Biology
Microorganisms display a stunning metabolic diversity. Understanding the origin of this diversity requires understanding how macroevolutionary processes such as innovation and diversification play out in the microbial world. Metabolic networks, which govern microbial resource use, can evolve through different mechanisms, e.g. horizontal gene transfer or de novo evolution of enzymes and pathways. [...]