The Social Microbiome Group is coming to @MPI_EVA_Leipzig and we are recruiting at multiple levels! You will work closely with me and Dr. Jenny Tung @jtung5. Apply by Sep 1 with a cover letter and CV. Please share 🔁

RT @melikedonertas: 🚨 Aging and Microbiome Conference 2025 .📌 Jena, Germany.📆 October 28-29, 2025.⏰ Abstract submission deadline: 31.05.202….

Two weeks left to apply! ⬇️.

Link to paper: PS: The Social Microbiome Group at @MPI_EVA_Leipzig is currently recruiting MSc and PhD students! If these questions interest you, get in touch or browse our open positions here:.

4) What are the consequences from a microbial perspective of being transmitted host-to-host, without an environmental intermediate, for an extended amount of time?.

3) What are the consequences (from a host perspective) of picking up a new microbial strain from another host rather from leaves, water, food, etc? If it came from another host, it more likely to already be adapted to the new host when it arrives?.

2) Which animal species might rely most on social transmission to acquire microbes? Which microbial species rely most on social transmission to disperse to new hosts?.

1) Does social structure in microbiomes mean that microbes are directly transmitted from host to host through social interactions?.(Answer: maybe! But we discuss other possible explanations & ways to disentangle them, too).

Our new @AnnualReviews paper, "Ecology and Evolution of the Social Microbiome" is now available in advance of the Nov 2024 issue!. Animal microbiomes often reflect the social organization of their hosts. We dive into some important unanswered questions about this pattern:

RT @PaulTurnerLab: Hey #Evol2024! Interested in the evolutionary ecology of host-parasite interactions? Come check out the presentations by….

(9/9) Thanks to coauthors @webbshasta, Carly Dickson, @ArchieLab, @jtung5, and everyone at the @AmboseliBaboons project who makes these large-scale analyses possible. Please let us know your thoughts!.

(8/9) So what to do w/ this information? We recommend longitudinal sampling to identify & focus on newly acquired strains, as well as careful consideration of other host traits that affect the microbiome (esp. if they are more similar among social partners!!).

(7/9) We think this is because strain-level patterns in microbiomes only temporarily reflect transmission networks – in the long term, other processes like selection and priority effects shape which strains persist or go extinct within each host.

(6/9) But when we tried the same approach in a less controlled setting – a long-term field study of wild primates – strain sharing was strongly driven by dietary and environmental similarities, even for individuals that never interacted or were never even alive at the same time.

(5/9) We re-analyzed data from a fecal microbiota transplant cohort (i.e., where the true transmission network is known) and found that strain sharing patterns were closely correlated with actual transmission.

(4/9) Strain sharing (when two individuals carry closely related lineages of the same microbial species) is thought to provide a more accurate picture of transmission that is less susceptible to these shared environmental effects than 16S profiling.

(3/9) The catch, though, is that social partners ALSO tend to be similar in other ways (age, diet, genetic relatedness) that also affect the microbiome. Without accounting for these, we might come to misleading conclusions about social transmission.

(2/9) In humans & many other social animals, individuals with closer relationships tend to have more similar microbiomes. This is often taken as evidence that social interactions transmit microbes from host to host.

Really excited to share this new preprint! In it, we ask what strain-resolved metagenomics can tell us about microbiome transmission, especially in natural host populations. 🧵.

RT @JackieLebz: Excited to launch the shiny new Lebenzon Lab website! Check us out and watch the opportunities space. .