A nutritional perspective on the Lepidopteran gut microbial community
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The overarching goal of this dissertation is to better understand how host nutrition mediates the relationship between the gut microbiota and their host, using adult butterflies as a novel and uniquely informative study system. In Chapter 2 (previously published as Ravenscraft and Boggs (2016) in Oecologia), I lay the nutritional foundations of the research by studying the relationship between the primary foods of butterflies and butterfly nutrient limitation. I show that flower nectar has much lower concentrations of sodium and amino acids than fruit juice. Consistent with the predictions of nutritional theory, nectivorous butterflies have a stronger preference for sodium, but contrary to expectations, frugivores respond more strongly to amino acids than nectivores. In Chapter 3, I investigate how the community composition and functional potential of the butterfly gut flora vary among host species and between host feeding guilds. I find that host species identity explains more variation in gut community composition than host diet. However, host diet still affects the functional potential of the gut flora: gut communities of frugivores exhibit higher levels of amino acid catabolism and lower levels of sugar catabolism than the gut communities of nectivores. In Chapter 4 I ask how gut bacteria are related to butterfly performance and fitness. I find that abundance of the bacterium Commensalibacter intestini is positively correlated with host lifespan, and maternal abundances of a Caulobacter species and a Streptococcus species are associated with faster larval development and increased adult food consumption, respectively, in the F1 offspring. All of these associations are maintained when maternal food is limited, thus there is no evidence that quantitative dietary restriction influences the outcomes of the host-gut flora relationship. In sum, this research develops adult butterflies as a study system for gut flora and thereby advances our understanding of nutritional interactions between a host and its gut microbial community.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Ravenscraft, Alison |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Biology. |
| Primary advisor | Boggs, Carol L |
| Primary advisor | Peay, Kabir |
| Thesis advisor | Boggs, Carol L |
| Thesis advisor | Peay, Kabir |
| Thesis advisor | Dirzo, Rodolfo |
| Thesis advisor | Fukami, Tadashi, 1972- |
| Advisor | Dirzo, Rodolfo |
| Advisor | Fukami, Tadashi, 1972- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Alison Ravenscraft. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Biology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Alison Ravenscraft
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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