This article targets the increased interest of how microbial communities and the environment affect one another through impacting the evolutionary features of the organisms they interact with. Shifts within the environment can consist of predictable and unpredictable changes. Predictable changes are consistent shifts in the surrounding environment that occur daily or seasonally. Animals and plants developed the use of external cues that regulate this when predictable changes in their environment occur. Examples of this regulation may be temperature cycles or the length of time photosynthesis will occur. Unpredictable changes are erratic shifts in the environment, such as climate change. These sharp fluctuations can cause fragmentation of
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Torpor is necessary for animals during seasonal changes where food is not always available, so the animals will go into resting periods in order to preserve energy. Gut microbes will change when squirrels are in hibernation because their dietary intake will switch from active to inactive. This means that they will not consume food during their hibernation, including interbout arousals or periods of time where conditions return the squirrel’s active state. Microbes in hamsters do not change during hibernation because during their interbout arousals, they do in fact consume food rather than the lipid-based that ground squirrels rely …show more content…
Such studies can be used to an advantage when trying to predict if a specific environmental change could possibly affect stable gut microbiota, causing the microbes to become unstable, disrupting a previously beneficial symbiosis. I found this reading to be an extremely useful conceptual tool when trying to understand how microbe symbiosis and the environment can affect each other. Very few studies have targeted this factor in the past, and I believe it is important to identify with this factor of symbiosis in order to fully understand how the environment and the species within that habitat directly and indirectly affect one
Torpor is necessary for animals during seasonal changes where food is not always available, so the animals will go into resting periods in order to preserve energy. Gut microbes will change when squirrels are in hibernation because their dietary intake will switch from active to inactive. This means that they will not consume food during their hibernation, including interbout arousals or periods of time where conditions return the squirrel’s active state. Microbes in hamsters do not change during hibernation because during their interbout arousals, they do in fact consume food rather than the lipid-based that ground squirrels rely …show more content…
Such studies can be used to an advantage when trying to predict if a specific environmental change could possibly affect stable gut microbiota, causing the microbes to become unstable, disrupting a previously beneficial symbiosis. I found this reading to be an extremely useful conceptual tool when trying to understand how microbe symbiosis and the environment can affect each other. Very few studies have targeted this factor in the past, and I believe it is important to identify with this factor of symbiosis in order to fully understand how the environment and the species within that habitat directly and indirectly affect one