Journal
PLOS BIOLOGY
Volume 19, Issue 8, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001322
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Funding
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation [GBMF5603]
- Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
- Office of the Provost of the Smithsonian Institution
- WWTF VRG Grant
- ERC
- European Union's Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant [101025649]
- Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SENACYT, Panama)
- NSF [OCE-1938147]
- Rohr Family Foundation
- Marie Curie Actions (MSCA) [101025649] Funding Source: Marie Curie Actions (MSCA)
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The microbiome of marine multicellular organisms plays a significant role in influencing their host's physiological capacities. Understanding the dynamics of interactions between hosts and microbial genetic variation is crucial for marine ecosystems to adapt to environmental changes. Long-term, multi-disciplinary research is needed to advance our understanding of how host-associated microbes shape marine hosts' responses to environmental changes.
Marine multicellular organisms host a diverse collection of bacteria, archaea, microbial eukaryotes, and viruses that form their microbiome. Such host-associated microbes can significantly influence the host's physiological capacities; however, the identity and functional role(s) of key members of the microbiome (core microbiome) in most marine hosts coexisting in natural settings remain obscure. Also unclear is how dynamic interactions between hosts and the immense standing pool of microbial genetic variation will affect marine ecosystems' capacity to adjust to environmental changes. Here, we argue that significantly advancing our understanding of how host-associated microbes shape marine hosts' plastic and adaptive responses to environmental change requires (i) recognizing that individual host-microbe systems do not exist in an ecological or evolutionary vacuum and (ii) expanding the field toward long-term, multidisciplinary research on entire communities of hosts and microbes. Natural experiments, such as time-calibrated geological events associated with well-characterized environmental gradients, provide unique ecological and evolutionary contexts to address this challenge. We focus here particularly on mutualistic interactions between hosts and microbes, but note that many of the same lessons and approaches would apply to other types of interactions.
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