Weitzman Chava L, Day Kimberley, Gibb Karen, Brown Gregory P, Rachmansah Angga, Christian Keith
Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, CDU, Darwin, Australia.
School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Environ Microbiol Rep. 2025 Aug;17(4):e70172. doi: 10.1111/1758-2229.70172.
Geckos have high skin bacterial diversity, even though gecko skin has antimicrobial, self-cleaning properties. To gain a better understanding of environment-animal-microbiome interactions in these reptiles, we investigated skin bacteria on seven northern Australian gecko species from five sites and two seasons (n = 234) and found support for our hypotheses of divergent communities between species, sites and seasons. Despite that support, predictor variables had low explanatory power, which increased when focusing within a site or species, explaining up to 40% and 27% of the variation among samples at a site or on a species found in multiple sites, respectively. Weather explained even less variation, as temperature and rainfall did not account for site and season differences. Low explanatory power of these variables indicates that additional factors, or stochasticity, explain much of the bacterial assemblage on geckos. Next, research is needed to determine if these low-biomass communities represent living symbionts. If so, assessing functional similarities, rather than taxonomic profiling, would clarify if bacterial communities have interactive roles with gecko hosts or represent short-lived environmental hitch-hikers and relic DNA.
尽管壁虎的皮肤具有抗菌、自清洁特性，但它们的皮肤细菌多样性却很高。为了更好地理解这些爬行动物中环境-动物-微生物组之间的相互作用，我们调查了来自澳大利亚北部五个地点、两个季节的七种壁虎的皮肤细菌（n = 234），并发现支持我们关于物种、地点和季节间群落分化的假设。尽管有这种支持，但预测变量的解释力较低，当聚焦于一个地点或一个物种时，解释力会增加，分别解释了一个地点或多个地点中一个物种样本间高达40%和27%的变异。天气所解释的变异甚至更少，因为温度和降雨并不能解释地点和季节的差异。这些变量的低解释力表明，其他因素或随机性解释了壁虎身上大部分的细菌群落。接下来，需要开展研究来确定这些低生物量群落是否代表着有生命的共生体。如果是这样，评估功能相似性而非分类特征分析，将阐明细菌群落与壁虎宿主是否具有相互作用，或者是否代表短暂的环境搭便车者和残留DNA。
