Abstract
The population cycles of small rodents have puzzled biologists for centuries. There is a growing recognition of the cascading effects of climate change on the population dynamics of rodents. However, the ultimate cause for the bottom-up effects of precipitation is poorly understood, from a microbial perspective. Here, we conducted a precipitation manipulation experiment in the field, and three feeding trials with controlled diets in the laboratory. We found precipitation supplementation facilitated the recovery of a perennial rhizomatous grass (Leymus chinensis) species, which altered the diet composition and increase the intake of fructose and fructooligosaccharides for Brandt’s vole. Lab results showed that this nutrient shift was accompanied by the modulation of gut microbiota composition and functional pathways (especially for the degradation or biosynthesis of L-histidine). Particularly, the relative abundance of Eubacterium hallii was consistently increased after feeding voles with more L. chinensis, fructose or fructooligosaccharide. These modulations ultimately increased the production of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and boosted the growth of vole. This study provides evidence that the precipitation pulses cascades through the plant community to affect rodent gut microbiome. Our results highlight the importance of considering host-microbiota interaction when investigating rodent population responses to climate change.
Highlights
Climate change is taking place at a greater pace with an increase in extreme events, including significant shifts in Supplementary information The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.precipitation patterns [1]
We mainly focused on Leymus chinensis (LC), Stipa krylovii (SK), and Cleistogenes squarrosa (CS) because these three species primarily dominated the plant community structure in the study area and constituted a large percentage of the vole’s food
The plant community structure mainly comprised of species such as C. squarrosa, LC, SK, Saussurea runcinata, Medicago sativa, Phlomis dentosa, and Carex enervis (Fig. 1a)
Summary
Recent studies suggested that climate change can have a large impact on the population dynamics of many species [2,3,4]. Shifts in precipitation can affect plant community composition and primary productivity, especially in arid and semi-arid environments, and trigger cascading changes in resources availability for herbivores [5]. In turn, alters small mammal (e.g., rodent) fitness and population dynamics [6,7,8]. The bottom-up effect of precipitation on rodents has been well documented [9], few studies have evaluated the relationship between precipitation and rodent populations using manipulative field experiments. Field studies rarely identify the physiological mechanisms causing the bottom-up regulation of plants on rodents, or examine the role of host-microbiota interactions in this regulation
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