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Understanding The Relationship Between Hosts And Their Microbiome, Boahemaa Adu-Oppong

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Microbes are bountiful and associated with every animal and plant kingdom. Furthermore, microbes can alter host phenotype, development, health and functioning. However, this is not a one-way interaction, hosts can structure microbial communities by changing the environment to be suitable for certain microbial species. Several studies have characterized microbial communities associated with hosts to answer two2 main questions in ecology: who’s there, and what are they doing? However, two questions from the field of community ecology are often ignored (1) what forces are structuring the microbial communities (how was the community formed) and (2) how stable are these communities. Vellend …