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Developmental plasticity enables an intestinal tapeworm to adapt to dietary stress
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  • Published: 20 February 2026

Developmental plasticity enables an intestinal tapeworm to adapt to dietary stress

  • Milan Jirků1 na1,
  • William Parker2 na1,
  • Oldřiška Kadlecová1,
  • Martin Moos3,4,
  • Monika M. Wiśniewska  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1530-78331,5,
  • Roman Kuchta  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4219-69241,
  • Petra Tláskalová1,5,
  • Vladislav Ilík  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5246-45236,
  • Aleš Tomčala  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5232-84417,
  • Zuzana Pavlíčková1,
  • Kristýna Brožová1,
  • Julius Lukeš  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0578-66181,5,
  • Miroslav Oborník1,5,
  • Martin Kolísko1,5,
  • Barbora Pafčo6 na2 &
  • …
  • Kateřina Jirků  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5411-60821 na2 

Nature Communications , Article number:  (2026) Cite this article

We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Subjects

  • Microbial ecology
  • Parasite biology

Abstract

Diet is one of the strongest ecological forces shaping the gut environment, yet its impact on intestinal worms (helminths) remains poorly understood. The helminth Hymenolepis diminuta is a suitable model for investigating how lifestyle changes in modern societies may disrupt host–helminth relationships. Here we show that dietary fiber availability shapes the developmental trajectory and life strategies of H. diminuta in a stage-dependent manner. Fiber deprivation at the time of host colonization leads to developmental arrest, manifested by reduced growth, absence of reproduction, and transcriptional changes consistent with suppressed development. This state is accompanied by diet-dependent remodeling of the host small intestinal microbiota and metabolome: whereas fiber-rich diets support fermentative microbial communities and a chemically diverse intestinal environment, the Western diet promotes dysbiotic profiles with reduced fermentation capacity and a more pro-inflammatory immune response. In contrast, adult H. diminuta that reach maturity in hosts maintained on a fiber-rich diet exhibit a reversible, estivation-like suppression of reproduction during short-term fiber deprivation, with full restoration of egg production following dietary recovery. Together, these findings indicate that dietary transitions associated with industrialized lifestyles can redirect helminth developmental programs and host–helminth–microbiome interactions, with implications for helminth persistence and potential therapeutic applications.

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Data availability

Transcriptomic data generated in this study are deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive under accession code PRJNA1126432. Bacteriome sequencing data are archived in the European Nucleotide Archive under accession code PRJEB86956. Metabolomics data and additional source data supporting the findings of this study—including images and videos of Hymenolepis diminuta, worm length measurements, egg counts, cytokine relative and Cp values, raw and relative body weight data, a checklist of bacteriome sequences, and a table of metabolite annotations and standards are available in the Figshare repository under accession https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.26038633. Detailed methodological protocols are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic under the INTER-EXCELLENCE program (grant no. LTAUSA19008 to K.J.), by the Research Council of Norway (grant no. 324516 to K.J. and M.K.), by the ERD fund project Center for Research of Pathogenicity and Virulence of Parasites (project no. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000759 to M.K., M.O., J.L.), and by the Czech Science Foundation (grant no. 23-07990S to R.K. and 25-15298S to J.L.). We acknowledge the CF Genomics CEITEC MU, provided through the NCMG research infrastructure (LM2023067 funded by MEYS CR), for their support with obtaining scientific data presented in this paper. Computational resources were provided by the e-INFRA CZ project (ID: 90254), supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic and IT4Innovations National Super Computer Center (project #Open-34-44), Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and guidance during the review process.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Milan Jirků, William Parker.

  2. These authors jointly supervised this work: Barbora Pafčo, Kateřina Jirků.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Parasitology, Biology Centre, Czech Academy of Sciences, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Milan Jirků, Oldřiška Kadlecová, Monika M. Wiśniewska, Roman Kuchta, Petra Tláskalová, Zuzana Pavlíčková, Kristýna Brožová, Julius Lukeš, Miroslav Oborník, Martin Kolísko & Kateřina Jirků

  2. Department of Surgery, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA

    William Parker

  3. Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre, Czech Academy of Sciences, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Martin Moos

  4. Department of Applied Chemistry, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Martin Moos

  5. Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Monika M. Wiśniewska, Petra Tláskalová, Julius Lukeš, Miroslav Oborník & Martin Kolísko

  6. Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic

    Vladislav Ilík & Barbora Pafčo

  7. Institute of Aquaculture and Protection of Waters, CENKVA FFPW, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Aleš Tomčala

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Contributions

M.J. conceptualized the study, developed methodology, conducted software analyses, performed investigation, carried out formal analysis and data curation, contributed to writing, produced visualizations, validated results, and supervised the work. W.P. contributed to conceptualization and methodology, performed software analyses and investigation, carried out formal analysis and data curation, contributed to writing, produced visualizations, validated results, and supervised the work. O.K. contributed to methodology, software, investigation, visualization, validation, and supervision. M.K. contributed to conceptualization, methodology, software, investigation, formal analysis, and data curation, contributed to writing, produced visualizations, validated results, and supervised the work. V.I. contributed to methodology, software, investigation, visualization, validation, and supervision. M.M.W. contributed to conceptualization, methodology, software, investigation, data curation, writing, visualization, validation, and supervision. R.K. contributed to methodology, software, investigation, visualization, validation, and supervision. M.Mo. contributed to methodology, software, investigation, visualization, validation, and supervision. P.T. contributed to methodology, software, investigation, visualization, validation, and supervision. A.T. contributed to methodology, software, investigation, visualization, validation, and supervision. Z.P. contributed to methodology, software, investigation, visualization, validation, and supervision. K.B. contributed to methodology, software, investigation, visualization, validation, and supervision. J.L. performed formal analysis and contributed to writing. M.O. contributed to conceptualization, software, formal analysis, data curation, writing, visualization, validation, and supervision. B.P. contributed to conceptualization, methodology, software, investigation, data curation, writing, visualization, validation, and supervision. K.J. conceptualized the study, developed methodology, performed software analyses and investigation, carried out formal analysis and data curation, contributed to writing, produced visualizations, validated results, and supervised the work.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kateřina Jirků.

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Competing interests

Coauthor W.P. has licensed intellectual property related to helminth therapy, which is owned by Duke University. This intellectual property is unrelated to the experimental design, data generation, analysis, or interpretation of the results presented in this study. The remaining authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Jirků, M., Parker, W., Kadlecová, O. et al. Developmental plasticity enables an intestinal tapeworm to adapt to dietary stress. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69475-0

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  • Received: 02 March 2025

  • Accepted: 02 February 2026

  • Published: 20 February 2026

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69475-0

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