The Role of Microbiome and Genotype in upon Parasite Re-Exposure.

Recently, it has been shown that the community of gut microorganisms plays a crucial role in host performance with respect to parasite tolerance. Knowledge, however, is lacking on the role of the gut microbiome in mediating host tolerance after parasite re-exposure, especially considering multiple parasite infections. We here aimed to fill this knowledge gap by studying the role of the gut microbiome on tolerance in upon multiple parasite species re-exposure. Additionally, we investigated the role of the host genotype in the interaction between the gut microbiome and the host phenotypic performance. A microbiome transplant experiment was performed in which three germ-free genotypes were exposed to a gut microbial inoculum and a parasite community treatment. The gut microbiome inocula were pre-exposed to the same parasite communities or a control treatment. performance was monitored, and amplicon sequencing was performed to characterize the gut microbial community. Our experimental results showed that the gut microbiome plays no role in tolerance upon parasite re-exposure. We did, however, find a main effect of the gut microbiome on body size reflecting parasite specific responses. Our results also showed that it is rather the genotype, and not the gut microbiome, that affected parasite-induced host mortality. Additionally, we found a role of the genotype in structuring the gut microbial community, both in alpha diversity as in the microbial composition.