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Interactions Between Avian Behavior and Microbiomes
Abstract
Animals are in constant interaction with single-celled organisms. These microbes inhabit an animal’s environment as well as most surfaces of the body, including the skin and gut. The intimate relationship animals have with these microbial communities, referred to as the microbiome, has shaped their evolution as well as how they live today. Despite the ubiquity of microbial communities, we have only been able to study them with recent advances in molecular and sequencing technology. Research in laboratory animals have found intriguing connections between the microbiome of the gut and the host animal’s behavior; however research into non-model organisms still lags behind. This dissertation investigated the interactions between gut and feather bacteria and behavior in wild-caught birds. Birds are a culturally, economically, and ecologically important taxa and many species are threatened or in rapid decline. We know relatively little about the microbiome’s role in birds’ lives and I sought to explore this topic in this dissertation. The majority of the work of this dissertation was using house sparrows (Passer domesticus), a worldwide distributed songbird, commonly used in research. We also used peafowl (Pavo cristatus), another species introduced to North America, to investigated how feather microorganisms impact behavior. We found that in wild-caught house sparrows, gut microbiome diversity is correlated with exploratory behavior. We also found that microbiome community composition was associated with problem-solving behavior in house sparrows. Much research on animals is performed in captivity and understanding how the condition of captivity is important for accurate interpretation of research. We found that significant changes in the diversity and composition of the house sparrow gut microbiome after an average of only 7 days including a significant decrease in alpha diversity. Finally, I also investigated the bacterial communities on feathers, a unique avian structure. We found that female but not male peafowl who preen more often also have lower abundances of bacteria on their feathers. Overall, this dissertation found some of the first evidence the microbiome and behavior are connected in birds, including exploration, problem-solving, and preening. These studies contribute to our understanding of animal behavior and provide foundations for additional research on wild animal microbiomes.
Subject
birdmicrobiome
house sparrow
behavior
problem solving
innovation
captivity
feather degrading bacteria
feather coloration
Citation
Florkowski, Melanie (2023). Interactions Between Avian Behavior and Microbiomes. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /198985.