Haemoplasmas in wild rodents: Routes of transmission and infection dynamics.

The way that some parasites and pathogens persist in the hostile environment of their host for long periods remains to be resolved. Here, longitudinal field surveys were combined with laboratory experiments to investigate the routes of transmission and infection dynamics of such a pathogen-a wild rodent haemotropic bacterium, specifically a Mycoplasma haemomuris-like bacterium. Fleaborne transmission, direct rodent-to-rodent transmission and vertical transmission from fleas or rodents to their offspring were experimentally quantified, and indications were found that the main route of bacterial transmission is direct, although its rate of successful transmission is low (~20%). The bacterium's temporal dynamics was then compared in the field to that observed under a controlled infection experiment in field-infected and laboratory-infected rodents, and indications were found, under all conditions, that the bacterium reached its peak infection level after 25-45 days and then decreased to low bacterial loads, which persist for the rodent's lifetime. These findings suggest that the bacterium relies on persistency with low bacterial loads for long-term coexistence with its rodent host, having both conceptual and applied implications.

From endosymbionts to host communities: factors determining the reproductive success of arthropod vectors.

Elucidating the factors determining reproductive success has challenged scientists since Darwin, but the exact pathways that shape the evolution of life history traits by connecting extrinsic (e.g., landscape structure) and intrinsic (e.g., female's age and endosymbionts) factors and reproductive success have rarely been studied. Here we collected female fleas from wild rodents in plots differing in their densities and proportions of the most dominant rodent species. We then combined path analysis and model selection approaches to explore the network of effects, ranging from micro to macroscales, determining the reproductive success of these fleas. Our results suggest that female reproductive success is directly and positively associated with their infection by Mycoplasma bacteria and their own body mass, and with the rodent species size and total density. In addition, we found evidence for indirect effects of rodent sex and rodent community diversity on female reproductive success. These results highlight the importance of exploring interrelated factors across organization scales while studying the reproductive success of wild organisms, and they have implications for the control of vector-borne diseases.

Multiple effects of host-species diversity on coexisting host-specific and host-opportunistic microbes.

While host-species diversity often influences microbial prevalence, there may be multiple mechanisms causing such effects that may also depend on the foraging strategy of the microbes. We employed a natural gradient of rodent-species richness to examine competing hypotheses describing possible mechanisms mediating the relationship between host-species richness and the prevalence of the most dominant microbes, along with microbe specificity to the different rodent host species. We sampled blood from three gerbil species in plots differing in terms of the proportion of the different species and screened for the most dominant bacteria. Two dominant bacterial lineages were detected: host-specific bacteria and host-opportunistic bacteria. Using a model selection approach, we detected evidence for both direct and indirect effects of host-species richness on the prevalence of these bacteria. Infection probability of the host-specific lineage was lower in richer host communities, most likely due to increased frequency and density of the least suitable host species. In contrast, field observations suggest that the effect of host-species richness on infection probability of the opportunistic lineage was both direct and indirect, mostly mediated by changes in flea densities on the host and by the presence of the host-specific lineage. Our results thus suggest that host-species richness has multiple effects on microbial prevalence, depending on the degree of host-specificity of the microbe in question.

Association of host and microbial species diversity across spatial scales in desert rodent communities.

Relationships between host and microbial diversity have important ecological and applied implications. Theory predicts that these relationships will depend on the spatio-temporal scale of the analysis and the niche breadth of the organisms in question, but representative data on host-microbial community assemblage in nature is lacking. We employed a natural gradient of rodent species richness and quantified bacterial communities in rodent blood at several hierarchical spatial scales to test the hypothesis that associations between host and microbial species diversity will be positive in communities dominated by organisms with broad niches sampled at large scales. Following pyrosequencing of rodent blood samples, bacterial communities were found to be comprised primarily of broad niche lineages. These communities exhibited positive correlations between host diversity, microbial diversity and the likelihood for rare pathogens at the regional scale but not at finer scales. These findings demonstrate how microbial diversity is affected by host diversity at different spatial scales and suggest that the relationships between host diversity and overall disease risk are not always negative, as the dilution hypothesis predicts.