SCHEIFLER Mathilde's profile
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SCHEIFLER MathildeORCID_LOGO

  • Evolution and Ecophysiology group - Functional and Evolutionary Entomology, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liège, Gembloux, Belgium
  • Aquatic, Biology, Ecology, Evolution, Fish, Genetics/Genomics, Insecta, Marine, Molecular biology, Parasitology, Phylogeny, Symbiosis
  • recommender

Recommendation:  1

Reviews:  0

Areas of expertise
I have a PhD in ecology and evolution with a major focus on the study of microorganisms, their role in ecosystems, and host-microbe interactions. Since my master degree, my main research interest is to study the evolutionary relationships between symbiotic communities within the same organism and their importance for host physiology and health in relation to the environment (biotic and abiotic factors). During my PhD, I oriented my research towards the external and internal microbial communities inhabiting natural populations of teleost fishes and investigated the link with their monogenean ectoparasites. Using metabarcoding approaches, my work was the first to reveal that variation in bacterial communities is driven by both annual fluctuations of abiotic factors and host-related factors. These studies have opened up new avenues of research, such as understanding the mechanisms of colonization of microorganisms and the differences in selection pressures according to fish tissue, species and associated traits, including diet, social behavior and physiology. I further provided novel evidence for a link between parasites and microbiota, which seems to be determined by several mechanisms potentially including the protective and attractive role of certain microorganisms, but also microorganisms that are themselves affected by parasites. I also studied the functional link between the gastrointestinal microbial communities and appetite regulation, as well as feeding behavior, growth and life history traits of salmonids during smoltification. As a postdoc, I am now studying the molecular basics of plasticity of fat synthesis in a parasitoid wasp, Leptopilina heterotoma by using ‘omics’ approaches (RNA and epigenome sequencing).

Recommendation:  1

26 Apr 2023
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Microbiome mediated tolerance to biotic stressors: a case study of the interaction between a toxic cyanobacterium and an oomycete-like infection in Daphnia magna

Multi-stress responses depend on the microbiome in the planktonic crustacean Daphnia

Recommended by and based on reviews by Natacha Kremer and 2 anonymous reviewers

The critical role that gut microbiota play in many aspects of an animal’s life, including pathogen resistance, detoxification, digestion, and nutritional physiology, is becoming more and more apparent (Engel and Moran 2013; Lindsay et al., 2020). Gut microbiota recruitment and maintenance can be largely affected by the surrounding environment (Chandler et al., 2011; Callens et al., 2020). The environment may thus dictate gut microbiota composition and diversity, which in turn can affect organismal responses to stress. Only few studies have, however, taken the gut microbiota into account to estimate life histories in response to multiple stressors in aquatic systems (Macke et al., 2016). 

Houwenhuyse et al., investigate how the microbiome affects life histories in response to ecologically relevant single and multiple biotic stressors (an oomycete-like parasite, and a toxic cyanobacterium) in Daphnia magna (Houwenhuyse et al., 2023). Daphnia is an excellent model, because this aquatic system lends itself extremely well for gut microbiota transplantation and manipulation. This is due to the possibility to sterilize eggs (making them free of bacteria), horizontal transmission of bacteria from the environment, and the relative ease of culturing genetically similar Daphnia clones in large numbers. 

The authors use an elegant experimental design to show that the Daphnia gut microbial community differs when derived from a laboratory versus natural inoculum, the latter being more diverse. The authors subsequently show that key life history traits (survival, fecundity, and body size) depend on the stressors (and combination thereof), the microbiota (structure and diversity), and Daphnia genotype. A key finding is that Daphnia exposed to both biotic stressors show an antagonistic interaction effect on survival (being higher), but only in individuals containing laboratory gut microbiota. The exact mechanism remains to be determined, but the authors propose several interesting hypotheses as to why Daphnia with more diverse gut microbiota do less well. This could be due, for example, to increased inter-microbe competition or an increased chance of contracting opportunistic, parasitic bacteria. For Daphnia with less diverse laboratory gut microbiota, a monopolizing species may be particularly beneficial for stress tolerance. Alongside these interesting findings, the paper also provides extensive information about the gut microbiota composition (available in the supplementary files), which is a very useful resource for other researchers. 

Overall, this study reveals that multiple, interacting factors affect the performance of Daphnia under stressful conditions. Of importance is that laboratory studies may be based on simpler microbiota systems, meaning that stress responses measured in the laboratory may not accurately reflect what is happening in nature. 

REFERENCES

Callens M, De Meester L, Muylaert K, Mukherjee S, Decaestecker E. The bacterioplankton community composition and a host genotype dependent occurrence of taxa shape the Daphnia magna gut bacterial community. FEMS Microbiology Ecology. 2020;96(8):fiaa128. https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiaa128

Chandler JA, Lang JM, Bhatnagar S, Eisen JA, Kopp A. Bacterial communities of diverse Drosophila species: ecological context of a host-microbe model system. PLOS Genetics. 2011;7(9):e1002272. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002272

Engel P, Moran NA. The gut microbiota of insects - diversity in structure and function. FEMS Microbiology Reviews. 2013;37(5):699-735. https://doi.org/10.1111/1574-6976.12025

Houwenhuyse S, Bulteel L, Vanoverberghe I, Krzynowek A, Goel N et al. Microbiome mediated tolerance to biotic stressors: a case study of the interaction between a toxic cyanobacterium and an oomycete-like infection in Daphnia magna. 2023. OSF, ver. 2 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Zoology. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/9n4mg

Lindsay EC, Metcalfe NB, Llewellyn MS. The potential role of the gut microbiota in shaping host energetics and metabolic rate. Journal of Animal Ecology. 2020;89(11):2415-2426. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13327

Macke E, Tasiemski A, Massol F, Callens M, Decaestecker E. Life history and eco-evolutionary dynamics in light of the gut microbiota. Oikos. 2017;126(4):508-531. https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.03900

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SCHEIFLER MathildeORCID_LOGO

  • Evolution and Ecophysiology group - Functional and Evolutionary Entomology, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liège, Gembloux, Belgium
  • Aquatic, Biology, Ecology, Evolution, Fish, Genetics/Genomics, Insecta, Marine, Molecular biology, Parasitology, Phylogeny, Symbiosis
  • recommender

Recommendation:  1

Reviews:  0

Areas of expertise
I have a PhD in ecology and evolution with a major focus on the study of microorganisms, their role in ecosystems, and host-microbe interactions. Since my master degree, my main research interest is to study the evolutionary relationships between symbiotic communities within the same organism and their importance for host physiology and health in relation to the environment (biotic and abiotic factors). During my PhD, I oriented my research towards the external and internal microbial communities inhabiting natural populations of teleost fishes and investigated the link with their monogenean ectoparasites. Using metabarcoding approaches, my work was the first to reveal that variation in bacterial communities is driven by both annual fluctuations of abiotic factors and host-related factors. These studies have opened up new avenues of research, such as understanding the mechanisms of colonization of microorganisms and the differences in selection pressures according to fish tissue, species and associated traits, including diet, social behavior and physiology. I further provided novel evidence for a link between parasites and microbiota, which seems to be determined by several mechanisms potentially including the protective and attractive role of certain microorganisms, but also microorganisms that are themselves affected by parasites. I also studied the functional link between the gastrointestinal microbial communities and appetite regulation, as well as feeding behavior, growth and life history traits of salmonids during smoltification. As a postdoc, I am now studying the molecular basics of plasticity of fat synthesis in a parasitoid wasp, Leptopilina heterotoma by using ‘omics’ approaches (RNA and epigenome sequencing).