Abstract
Microbes influence a wide range of host social behaviors and vice versa. So far, however, the mechanisms underpinning these complex interactions remain poorly understood. In social animals, where individuals share microbes and interact around foods, the gut microbiota may have considerable consequences on host social interactions by acting upon the nutritional behavior of individual animals. Here we illustrate how conceptual advances in nutritional ecology can help the study of these processes and allow the formulation of new empirically testable predictions. First, we review key evidence showing that gut microbes influence the nutrition of individual animals, through modifications of their nutritional state and feeding decisions. Next, we describe how these microbial influences and their social consequences can be studied by modelling populations of hosts and their gut microbiota into a single conceptual framework derived from nutritional geometry. Our approach raises new perspectives for the study of holobiont nutrition and will facilitate theoretical and experimental research on the role of the gut microbiota in the mechanisms and evolution of social behavior.
Highlights
Interactions between hosts and their microbiota, that together form the “holobiont” [1,2,3], influence various aspects of an animal’s biology, including nutrition [4] and behavior [5]
We argue that concepts of nutritional geometry can bring new fundamental insights into emerging research on microbiota and social behaviors, by integrating nutritional interactions at different levels in a common theoretical framework
We describe how these multi-level interactions can be modelled in nutritional geometry to generate new empirical predictions about the influence of the gut microbiota on social behaviour
Summary
Interactions between hosts and their microbiota, that together form the “holobiont” [1,2,3], influence various aspects of an animal’s biology, including nutrition [4] and behavior [5]. Address their own nutritional needs and following others This can be achieved by collectively reaching a group-level intake target (IT global) midway between the two sub-group ITs. Concepts of nutritional geometry have been used to explore the effects of nutrition on social interactions, an approach called “social nutrition” [28,29,30]. Individuals must often trade-off between choosing foods that address their own nutritional needs and following others’ choices to maintain social cohesion, which can generate a variety of social responses [28] These interacting effects between nutrition and social behaviors can be modelled by considering all individuals constituting a social group in a common nutrient space (Reference [28]; Figure 1C). Here we only focus on microbes that colonize the gut
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