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Molecular ecology
Feb, 2025;34 (3): e17629.

Population Dynamics and the Microbiome in a Wild Boreal Mammal: The Snowshoe Hare Cycle and Impacts of Diet, Season and Predation Risk.

Mason R Stothart, Sophia Lavergne, Laura McCaw, Hardeep Singh, Wilfred de Vega, Katherine Amato, Jocelyn Poissant, Rudy Boonstra
Author Information
  1. Mason R Stothart: Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. ORCID
  2. Sophia Lavergne: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
  3. Laura McCaw: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
  4. Hardeep Singh: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
  5. Wilfred de Vega: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
  6. Katherine Amato: Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA. ORCID
  7. Jocelyn Poissant: Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
  8. Rudy Boonstra: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
PMID: 39698753 DOI: 10.1111/mec.17629

Abstract

The North American boreal forest is a massive ecosystem, and its keystone herbivore is the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus). Hares are exposed to considerable environmental extremes in diet and weather, food availability, and predation risk. Gut microbiomes have been suggested to facilitate adaptive animal responses to environmental change, but severe environmental challenges to homeostasis can also disrupt host-microbiome relationships. To better understand gut microbiome contributions to animal acclimation, we studied the faecal bacterial microbiome of wild hares across two types of extreme environmental change that are integral to their natural history: (1) seasonal transitions between summer and winter, and (2) changes over the ~10���year 'boom-bust' population cycles that are characterised by shifting food resource availability and predation pressure. When compared to summer, hares in winter had lower bacterial richness and were depleted in 20 families (including Oxalobacteraceae and Christensenellaceae) but enriched for Ruminococcaceae (a family which contains plant fibre degrading bacteria) alongside nine other bacterial groups. Marked bacterial microbiome differences also occurred across phases of the population cycle. Bacterial microbiomes were lower in richness and compositionally distinct in the peak compared to the increase or decline phases of the population cycle. Direct measures of host physiology and diet quality (faecal fibre contents) most strongly supported food resource availability as a mechanism underlying phase-based differences in bacterial communities, but faecal fibre contents could not fully account for bacterial microbiome variation across phases.

Keywords

16S rRNA HPA axis food limitation gut health stress wildlife

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Grants

  1. /Polar Knowledge Canada
  2. /Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

MeSH Term

Animals
Seasons
Diet
Feces
Gastrointestinal Microbiome
Hares
Population Dynamics
Bacteria
Predatory Behavior
Taiga
Microbiota
Ecosystem
Journal Article

Word Cloud

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