Abstract
The eco-evolutionary interactions among members of the vertebrate gut microbiota that ultimately result in host-specific communities are poorly understood. Here we show that Lactobacillus reuteri coexists with species that belong to the Lactobacillus johnsonii cluster (L. johnsonii, L. gasseri, and L taiwanensis) in a taxonomically wide range of rodents, suggesting cohabitation over evolutionary times. The two dominant Lactobacillus species found in wild mice establish a commensalistic relationship in gastric biofilms when introduced together into germ-free mice in which L. reuteri facilitates colonization of L. taiwanensis. Genomic analysis revealed allopatric diversification in strains of both species that originated from geographically separated locations (Scotland and France). Allopatry of the strains resulted in reduced formation of mixed biofilms in vitro, indicating that interspecies interactions in gastric Lactobacillus-biofilms are the result of an adaptive evolutionary process that occurred in a biogeographical context. In summary, these findings suggest that members within the vertebrate gut microbiota can evolve inter-dependencies through ecological facilitation, which could represent one mechanism by which host-specific bacterial communities assemble across vertebrate species and an explanation for their spatial and biogeographic patterns.
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Acknowledgements
JW acknowledges support from the Campus Alberta Innovation Program (CAIP). This work was further supported by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) awarded to JW. TW acknowledges the financial support from China Scholarship Council, and JFB acknowledges support from the German Science Foundation (DFG) CRC 1182. We are grateful to Dr Stephen Ogg and Terri Fangman for assistance with confocal microscopy, and Misaph Alipour for assistance with FISH. Finally, we thank the staff in the animal facilities at both University of Nebraska Lincoln and University of Alberta for their support with animal husbandry.
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Lin, X.B., Wang, T., Stothard, P. et al. The evolution of ecological facilitation within mixed-species biofilms in the mouse gastrointestinal tract. ISME J 12, 2770–2784 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-018-0211-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-018-0211-0
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