Most individual traits are now being considered as the combined expression of the host and their associated microbial genomes (i.e., holo-genomes). Previous studies on microbiomes have largely focused on cataloging microbial diversity, whereas our understanding of underlying mechanisms that maintain host-microbiome interactions is limited. Together with our collaborator, Dr. Hayley Lanier, we are studying high-altitude specialist Pikas (host) and interactions with their gut microbiome to examine the processes of microbiome-mediated adaptation to food resources in these species.
The two North American species, American pikas (O. princeps) and collared pikas (O. collaris), inhabit mountainous regions throughout the western United States and Canada. They provide examples of complex meta-organism systems where multiple simultaneous interactions between the host, microbe and the environment can be studied. One important trait they demonstrate is the unusual feeding behavior and considerable dietary flexibility, which allows them to adapt to diverse food resources available at different habitats. This diversity in dietary resources may expose pikas to diverse environmental microbiomes, thereby leading to the changes in their gut microbiome composition among various populations and species of pikas.
We are exploring their gut and associated environmental microbiome to dissect out the relative roles of key mechanisms, such as dispersal, environmental selection, drift, and diversification in shaping host-microbiome interactions and their interdependencies, and examine the functional association of pika-microbiome holo-genomes.
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