Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA.
Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA.
Microb Ecol. 2017 Oct;74(3):745-756. doi: 10.1007/s00248-017-0986-y. Epub 2017 May 2.
Resident microbial communities living on amphibian skin can have significant effects on host health, yet the basic ecology of the host-microbiome relationship of many amphibian taxa is poorly understood. We characterized intraspecific variation in the skin microbiome of the salamander Ensatina eschscholtzii xanthoptica, a subspecies composed of four genetically distinct populations distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, USA. We found that salamanders from four geographically and genetically isolated populations harbor similar skin microbial communities, which are dominated by a common core set of bacterial taxa. Additionally, within a population, the skin microbiome does not appear to differ significantly between salamanders of different ages or sexes. In all cases, the salamander skin microbiomes were significantly different from those of the surrounding terrestrial environment. These results suggest that the relationship between E. e. xanthoptica salamanders and their resident skin microbiomes is conserved, possibly indicating a stable mutualism between the host and microbiome.
生活在两栖动物皮肤表面的常驻微生物群落会对宿主健康产生重大影响，但许多两栖动物类群的宿主-微生物组关系的基本生态学仍知之甚少。我们对分布于美国加利福尼亚州旧金山湾区和内华达山脉的四个遗传上截然不同的种群组成的黄点蝾螈 Ensatina eschscholtzii xanthoptica 的皮肤微生物组进行了种内变异特征描述。我们发现，来自四个地理和遗传上隔离的种群的蝾螈具有相似的皮肤微生物群落，这些群落主要由一组常见的细菌分类群组成。此外，在一个种群内，不同年龄或性别的蝾螈的皮肤微生物组似乎没有显著差异。在所有情况下，蝾螈的皮肤微生物组与周围的陆地环境有显著差异。这些结果表明，E. e. xanthoptica 蝾螈与其常驻皮肤微生物组之间的关系是保守的，这可能表明宿主和微生物组之间存在稳定的共生关系。
