Niche partitioning facilitates coexistence of closely related honey bee gut bacteria

eLife

Philipp Engel¹  Nicolas Neuschwander¹  Silvia Brochet¹  Andrew Quinn¹  Ruben AT Mars²  Uwe Sauer² 

[1] Department of Fundamental Microbiology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland;Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland;

关键词: honey bee;    lactobacillus firm5;    gut microbiota;    bacterial coexistence;    niche partitioning;    Other;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.68583

来源: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd

【 摘 要 】

Ecological processes underlying bacterial coexistence in the gut are not well understood. Here, we disentangled the effect of the host and the diet on the coexistence of four closely related Lactobacillus species colonizing the honey bee gut. We serially passaged the four species through gnotobiotic bees and in liquid cultures in the presence of either pollen (bee diet) or simple sugars. Although the four species engaged in negative interactions, they were able to stably coexist, both in vivo and in vitro. However, coexistence was only possible in the presence of pollen, and not in simple sugars, independent of the environment. Using metatranscriptomics and metabolomics, we found that the four species utilize different pollen-derived carbohydrate substrates indicating resource partitioning as the basis of coexistence. Our results show that despite longstanding host association, gut bacterial interactions can be recapitulated in vitro providing insights about bacterial coexistence when combined with in vivo experiments.

【 授权许可】

CC BY