Increasing evidence suggests that the community of microbes located within the gastrointestinal tract of vertebrates, known as the “gut microbiome”, is a crucial determinant of health and physiological condition. In growing animals, the gut microbiome has been shown to affect digestive efficiency, growth and susceptibility/resistance to parasites. However, the factors shaping the acquisition of the gut microbiome during early life are poorly understood.
The tawny owl (Swedish: kattuggla; Strix aluco) is one of our most common top predators occurring in a range of landscapes including urban, agricultural and forest habitats. It is a generalist predator whose diet can vary markedly between nests and years, with knock-on effects on breeding success. Cloacal samples for microbiome analysis have been collected from adult and nestling tawny owls from a nestbox-breeding population close to Lund between 2020 and 2023.
The overall aim of the project is to characterise the microbiome of young and adult tawny owls and investigate the causes and consequences of variation in the microbiome. There are several questions that could be addressed including:
- How does diet shape the microbiome?
- How does the microbiome change during development and relate to chick growth?
- How similar are the microbiomes of parents and offspring?
- How does habitat type shape the microbiome?
The project would suit a student with an interest in evolutionary and molecular ecology and with some previous experience of R. Ideally, the student will have some molecular lab experience and will carry out DNA extractions and preparation of sequencing libraries. The student will employ bioinformatics approaches to process the sequence data and carry out multivariate analyses in R.
Contact Hannah Watson for more details: hannah.watson@biol.lu.se
Suggested reading:
Bodawatta et al. 2022. Avian gut microbiomes taking flight. Trends in Microbiology. 10.1016/j.tim.2021.07.003
Corl A et al. 2020. Movement ecology and sex are linked to barn owl microbial community composition. Molecular Ecology 29:1358-1371. 10.1111/mec.15398
Videvall E et al. 2019. Major shifts in gut microbiota during development and its relationship to growth in ostriches. Molecular Ecology 28:2653-2667. 10.1111/mec.15087