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Fungal infection alters the selection, dispersal and drift processes structuring the amphibian skin microbiome
Author(s) -
Wilber Mark Q.,
Jani Andrea J.,
Mihaljevic Joseph R.,
Briggs Cheryl J.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
ecology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.852
H-Index - 265
eISSN - 1461-0248
pISSN - 1461-023X
DOI - 10.1111/ele.13414
Subject(s) - biological dispersal , microbiome , amphibian , biology , ecology , structuring , microbial ecology , selection (genetic algorithm) , community , microbial population biology , niche , ecological selection , neutral theory of molecular evolution , evolutionary biology , ecosystem , genetics , population , computer science , demography , finance , artificial intelligence , sociology , bacteria , gene , economics
Symbiotic microbial communities are important for host health, but the processes shaping these communities are poorly understood. Understanding how community assembly processes jointly affect microbial community composition is limited because inflexible community models rely on rejecting dispersal and drift before considering selection. We developed a flexible community assembly model based on neutral theory to ask: How do dispersal, drift and selection concurrently affect the microbiome across environmental gradients? We applied this approach to examine how a fungal pathogen affected the assembly processes structuring the amphibian skin microbiome. We found that the rejection of neutrality for the amphibian microbiome across a fungal gradient was not strictly due to selection processes, but was also a result of species‐specific changes in dispersal and drift. Our modelling framework brings the qualitative recognition that niche and neutral processes jointly structure microbiomes into quantitative focus, allowing for improved predictions of microbial community turnover across environmental gradients.