Pasquaretta Cristian, Gómez-Moracho Tamara, Heeb Philipp, Lihoreau Mathieu
Research Center on Animal Cognition (CRCA), Center for Integrative Biology (CBI), CNRS, University Paul Sabatier, 31062 Toulouse, France.
Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique, UMR 5174 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Paul Sabatier, ENSFEA, 31062 Toulouse, France.
Genes (Basel). 2018 Nov 6;9(11):534. doi: 10.3390/genes9110534.
Microbes influence a wide range of host social behaviors and vice versa. So far, however, the mechanisms underpinning these complex interactions remain poorly understood. In social animals, where individuals share microbes and interact around foods, the gut microbiota may have considerable consequences on host social interactions by acting upon the nutritional behavior of individual animals. Here we illustrate how conceptual advances in nutritional ecology can help the study of these processes and allow the formulation of new empirically testable predictions. First, we review key evidence showing that gut microbes influence the nutrition of individual animals, through modifications of their nutritional state and feeding decisions. Next, we describe how these microbial influences and their social consequences can be studied by modelling populations of hosts and their gut microbiota into a single conceptual framework derived from nutritional geometry. Our approach raises new perspectives for the study of holobiont nutrition and will facilitate theoretical and experimental research on the role of the gut microbiota in the mechanisms and evolution of social behavior.
微生物影响着宿主的多种社会行为，反之亦然。然而，迄今为止，支撑这些复杂相互作用的机制仍知之甚少。在群居动物中，个体共享微生物并围绕食物进行互动，肠道微生物群可能通过影响个体动物的营养行为，对宿主的社会互动产生重大影响。在这里，我们阐述了营养生态学的概念进展如何有助于对这些过程的研究，并有助于形成新的可实证检验的预测。首先，我们回顾关键证据，表明肠道微生物通过改变个体动物的营养状态和摄食决策来影响其营养状况。接下来，我们描述如何通过将宿主及其肠道微生物群的种群建模到一个源自营养几何学的单一概念框架中，来研究这些微生物影响及其社会后果。我们的方法为全生物营养研究提出了新的视角，并将促进关于肠道微生物群在社会行为机制和进化中的作用的理论和实验研究。
