Increasing evidence suggests that the community of microbes located within the gastrointestinal tract of vertebrates – the “gut microbiome” – is a crucial determinant of health and physiological condition. However, the factors shaping the gut microbiome, especially during early life, are poorly understood.
The tawny owl is one of our most common predators occurring in urban, agricultural and forest habitats. It is a generalist predator, and the diet can vary between nests and years.
The overall aim of the project is to characterise the gut 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 the gut microbiome vary across a gradient of human modification of the landscape?
- How does diet shape the gut microbiome?
- Can the gut microbiome indicate quality of an individual and the likelihood of a chick recruiting into the breeding population?
- How does the gut microbiome change during development and relate to chick growth?
- How similar are the gut microbiomes of parents and offspring?
The project would suit a student with an interest in evolutionary and molecular ecology and with some previous experience of R. The student will employ bioinformatics approaches to process DNA sequence data and carry out multivariate analyses in R. Depending on the stage of joining the project, there may be labwork.
Contact Hannah Watson for more details: hannah.watson@biol.lu.se
https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/hannah-watson/
If you want to read more…
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