Types of animal behaviour and cognition paper #animalsbehaviour #animalcognition #AcademicChatter

Throwback to one of my first studies showing individual recognition in wild jackdaws, birds of the crow family.

🚨 🪺🐦🦠 PhD opportunity in my lab for UK home fee students. Feel free to contact me for informal enquiries. Please share! Application details here: Lab website:

Okay I’ve signed up, come find me

RT @IBIS_journal: Manipulating a host-native microbial strain compensates for low microbial diversity by increasing weight gain in a wild b….

Experimental evidence linking gut microbes to fitness in wild systems has been scarce. We hope our work sparks more experiments into how gut microbiomes shape wildlife fitness. #GutHealth #WildlifeBiology @bioUEA @uccBEES @teagasc. See paper & authors:

We propose that high gut microbial diversity aids weight gain, but only when food is plentiful. In food-limited situations, high diversity may come at a cost. Microbial supplementation may counteract this trade-off.

Diversity was linked to weight in the opposite direction than before. In control nests, low diversity resulted in underweight birds. In nests supplemented with L. kimchicus, we saw a stabilising effect—nestlings maintained a healthy 17g weight, regardless of gut diversity.

We found L. kimchicus in higher abundance in nestlings that received the supplement, along with increased gut diversity. Interestingly, this went against our prediction that more L. kimchicus would reduce diversity via competition. #MicrobiomeSurprises

To test its impact on nestling weight, we coated mealworms with L. kimchicus and placed them in nests across Cork, Ireland, while other nests received untreated worms. Parents eagerly fed the worms to their chicks.

We successfully isolated L. kimchicus from nestling fecal samples💩& assessed its potential as a supplement. Whole genome sequencing showed it mainly supports protein and carbohydrate metabolism—ideal for growing chicks. It passed a probiotic screening safety and efficacy test.

It's no easy feat to alter the gut microbiome in wild animals. We aimed to culture Lactobacillus strains native to the host, ensuring ecological validity, and then administer them orally to nestlings.

Previously, we observed a negative correlation between nestling gut microbiota diversity and future weight gain. We identified 3 Lactobacillus ASVs linked to survival. This led us to explore a hypothesis: can manipulating the gut microbiome impact weight?

Does the gut microbiome affect wildlife fitness? Our latest study, led by @ShaneE_Somers & JL Quinn shows that supplementing great tits with a natural gut microbe, Lactobacillus kimchicus, shifts the gut microbiome & alters nestling weight, a key survival trait. 🧵#ScienceThread

Overall the gut microbiome may influence the emergence & maintenance of phenotypic variation in wildlife. We hope our study prompts greater emphasis on the importance of healthy gut microbiomes for wildlife and increases efforts to reduce the chemicals entering our environment.

These results are supported by inferred metabolic function of the gut microbiome - tryptophan , phenylalanine and tyrosine metabolism - many catecholamine neurotransmitters that are neuroactive in pond snails brains and involved in locomotion and respiration

We measured pace-of-life traits, which commonly co-vary (but not always). Our results suggest that antibiotic exposure and gut microbiome disruption may explain why we observe disparities in whether animal personality traits and metabolic rate co-vary

Snail had poorer memory the higher the antibiotic concentration- at a critical threshold of 2ng/ul (Sulfamethoxazole + oxytetracycline) - representative of concentrations reported in freshwater ecosystems across the globe

the gut microbiota was increasingly perturbed as antibiotic exposure increased across multiple metrics. Interestingly alpha diversity increased, due to the relative depletion of some highly abundant microbes and the colonization of novel microbes sourced from the environment.

We provide experimental evidence from aquatic pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) that environmental stressors and the gut microbiota explain host phenotypic plasticity and disrupted co-variation among pace-of-life traits

Five years ago I met @Snail_memory at a conference. "I love your study system, can we do microbiome cognition work together?" Supported by an @asab_org research grant that funded an undergrad summer intern Ignacio A Cienfuegos, our paper is now out! 🧵👇