Microbiomes as metacommunities: processes at multiple scales combine to shape the gut microbiota in wild mice

Dr. Knowles is an ecologist working on host-symbiont relationships at the University of Oxford. Sarah’s work aims to understand the processes that generate natural variation in the mammalian gut microbiome, and the physiological and fitness consequences this variation has for the host. She often uses wild rodents to address questions in this area (she/her).
 

Who’s in charge here?: Microbial contributions to animal physiology, ecology, and evolution

Dr. Kohl studies host-microbe interactions in the context of organismal biology and comparative physiology. His work focuses on (i) increasing our understanding of the functional implications of host-microbe relationships to host physiology, ecology, and evolution; and (ii) uncovering the mechanistic bases for these interactions. His lab uses captive experimental systems in a diversity of vertebrate animals. This talk will present data demonstrating that gut microbes contribute to voluntary diet selection in rodents and thermal tolerance in larval amphibians. Collectively, this work provides evidence that animals do not act in isolation, but indeed depend heavily on the actions of their microbial partners. Thus, we must start considering the collective unit of host and microbiome (the “hologenome” or “holobiont”) when studying animal physiology, ecology, and evolution.

Tree thinking in microbiome data science

We are the Qiyun (pronounced as “chee-yeun”) Lab at the Biodesign Center for Fundamental and Applied Microbiomics. We study data science for microbiomics and multiomics. We are interested in the development of computational tools and resources to improve microbiome data analytics, the study of various host-associated and environmental microbial communities, and the investigation of the evolution of microbes and their hosts. This presentation will introduce the idea of combining phylogenetics and high-dimensional data analysis to achieve better understanding of the microbial world through its multiple levels: genes, genomes, lineages, communities, hosts, and environments.