School of Biological Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Kaurna Country, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
Centre for Marine Science and Innovation, School of Biological, Environmental and Earth Sciences, University of New South Wales, Bidjigal Country, Sydney, Australia.
Microb Ecol. 2023 Jul;86(1):658-669. doi: 10.1007/s00248-022-02052-2. Epub 2022 Jun 11.
Creating biodiverse urban habitat has been proposed, with growing empirical support, as an intervention for increasing human microbial diversity and reducing associated diseases. However, ecological understanding of urban biodiversity interventions on human skin microbiota remains limited. Here, we experimentally test the hypotheses that disturbed skin microbiota recover better in outdoor schoolyard environments and that greater biodiversity provides a greater response. Repeating the experiment three times, we disturbed skin microbiota of fifty-seven healthy 10-to-11-year-old students with a skin swab (i.e., cleaning), then exposed them to one school environment-either a 'classroom' (n = 20), 'sports field' (n = 14), or biodiverse 'forest' (n = 23)-for 45 min. Another skin swab followed the exposure to compare 'before' and 'after' microbial communities. After 45 min, the disturbance immediately followed by outdoor exposure, especially the 'forest', had an enriching and diversifying effect on skin microbiota, while 'classroom' exposure homogenised inter-personal variability. Each effect compounded over consecutive days indicating longer-term exposure outcomes. The experimental disturbance also reduced the core skin microbiota, and only outdoor environments were able to replenish lost species richness to core membership (n species > 50% prevalent). Overall, we find that environmental setting, especially including biodiversity, is important in human microbiota recovery periods and that the outdoors provide resilience to skin communities. This work also has implications for the inclusion of short periods of outside or forest exposure in school scheduling. Future investigations of the health impacts of permanent urban biodiversity interventions are needed.
创造生物多样性的城市生境，随着越来越多的经验证据支持，被提议作为增加人类微生物多样性和减少相关疾病的干预措施。然而，人们对城市生物多样性干预措施对人类皮肤微生物群的生态理解仍然有限。在这里，我们通过实验测试了以下假设：受干扰的皮肤微生物群在户外校园环境中恢复得更好，而更大的生物多样性提供了更好的响应。我们重复了三次实验，用皮肤拭子（即清洁）干扰了 57 名 10 至 11 岁健康学生的皮肤微生物群，然后让他们暴露在三种校园环境中——教室（n = 20）、运动场（n = 14）或生物多样性丰富的森林（n = 23）——45 分钟。暴露后进行另一次皮肤拭子采样，以比较微生物群落的“之前”和“之后”。暴露 45 分钟后，户外暴露，尤其是森林，对皮肤微生物群具有丰富和多样化的作用，而教室暴露则使个体间的可变性趋同。每种效应在连续几天内都有累积，表明了长期暴露的结果。实验性干扰还减少了核心皮肤微生物群，只有户外环境才能补充失去的物种丰富度到核心成员（n 种 > 50%流行）。总体而言，我们发现环境设置，特别是包括生物多样性，对人类微生物群恢复时期很重要，户外环境为皮肤群落提供了恢复力。这项工作还对在学校时间表中纳入短时间的户外或森林暴露有启示。需要对永久性城市生物多样性干预措施的健康影响进行进一步研究。
