Terrestrial Ecology Unit, Department of Biology, Ghent University, K.L. Ledeganckstraat 35, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium; Evolutionary Ecology Group, Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, Belgium; Laboratoire Evolution & Diversité Biologique, UMR 5174 CNRS-Université Paul Sabatier-ENSFEA-IRD, 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062 Toulouse, France.
Department of Pathology, Bacteriology and Avian Diseases, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University, Merelbeke, Belgium.
Sci Total Environ. 2018 Jan 15;612:1276-1286. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.09.035. Epub 2017 Sep 8.
Urbanisation represents one of the most radical forms of terrestrial land use change and has been shown to lead to alterations in ecosystem functioning and community dynamics and changes in individual phenotypic traits. While the recent surge in microbiome studies has brought about a paradigm shift by which individuals cannot truly be considered independently of the bacterial communities they host, the role of gut microbiota in organismal response to human-induced environmental change is still scarcely studied. Here, we applied a metabarcoding approach to examine the impact of urbanisation on the gut microbiota of Passer domesticus. We found urbanisation to be associated to lower microbiota species diversity, modifications in taxonomic composition and community structure, and changes in functional composition. The strength of these relationships, however, depended on the spatial scale and season at which they were considered. Such spatio-temporal effect suggests that urbanisation may dampen the natural seasonal variation of the gut microbiota observed in more pristine habitats, potentially influencing the fitness of urban organisms. Our results hence shed light on a hitherto little considered perspective, i.e. that the negative effects of urbanisation on city-dwelling organisms may extend to their microbiomes, causing potential dysbioses.
城市化是最激进的陆地利用方式之一，已被证明会导致生态系统功能和群落动态的改变，以及个体表型特征的变化。虽然最近微生物组研究的激增带来了一种范式转变，即个体不能真正被视为与其所寄生的细菌群落分离，但肠道微生物群在生物体对人类引起的环境变化的反应中的作用仍鲜有研究。在这里，我们应用宏条形码方法来研究城市化对家麻雀肠道微生物群的影响。我们发现城市化与较低的微生物物种多样性、分类组成和群落结构的改变以及功能组成的改变有关。然而，这些关系的强度取决于所考虑的空间尺度和季节。这种时空效应表明，城市化可能会抑制在较原始栖息地观察到的肠道微生物群的自然季节性变化，从而可能影响城市生物的适应性。因此，我们的研究结果揭示了一个迄今被忽视的观点，即城市化对城市生物的负面影响可能会扩展到它们的微生物群，从而导致潜在的菌群失调。
