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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

The Evolution Of Host Specificity In The Vertebrate Gut Symbiont Lactobacillus Reuteri, Steven Frese Nov 2012

The Evolution Of Host Specificity In The Vertebrate Gut Symbiont Lactobacillus Reuteri, Steven Frese

Department of Food Science and Technology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The vertebrate gut is home to one of the densest populations of life on Earth. This microbial community has a profound effect on host health, nutrition, development, behavior, and evolution. However, very little is known about how these microbes have evolved with their vertebrate hosts, how and whether they select hosts or how they remain associated with their hosts. Recent work identified Lactobacillus reuteri as an organism that is composed of host-specific sub-populations, each population associated with a different host animal. Representatives from each host-associated population were tested for their ability to colonize gnotobiotic mice, which only rodent strains could …


Genetic Measures Confirm Familial Relationships And Strengthen Study Design, Stacie J. Robinson, Ryan D. Walrath, Timonthy R. Vandeelen, Kurt C. Vercauteren Jan 2012

Genetic Measures Confirm Familial Relationships And Strengthen Study Design, Stacie J. Robinson, Ryan D. Walrath, Timonthy R. Vandeelen, Kurt C. Vercauteren

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Social structure and behavioral interactions between individuals shape basic biological processes, such as breeding; foraging and predator avoidance; movement and dispersal; and disease transmission. We used a targeted trapping strategy to capture kin groups of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) during 2007 and 2008 in Sandhill Wildlife Research Area, Wisconsin, USA, in order to observe social behaviors. Because inferring family relationships from observation of behavior is subjective, we usedmeasures of genetic relatedness and parentage assignment tests to determine that our capture strategy was efficient for capturing related pairs (78% of groups contained 1 dyad of related animals). The results of …