lvysaur
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The curious case of the caterpillar's missing microbes
Tobin Hammer, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, investigated the intestinal microbes of 124 species of wild, leaf-eating caterpillars from the Americas by sequencing a gene commonly used to identify microorganisms. In a preprint posted to the bioRxiv server, Hammer and his team report that they found no sign of what he calls “resident” microbes
In a study of Peruvian ants, Sanders found that some ground-dwelling species seemed to lack an intestinal microbiome entirely.
Matan Shelomi, affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, spent years studying the gut microbiomes of herbivorous stick insects (Phasmatodea). He discovered that there were no microbes in the insects’ guts. Later, he found evidence that the Phasmatodea could break down pectin — another fibre found in plant cell walls — using genes stolen from bacteria early on in the insects' evolutionary history.
“Anecdotally, I’ve heard from researchers having similar problems in birds and fish,” says Hammer. His study included data from several vertebrate species as controls. Some, such as goats, do harbour a gut microbiome. But when Hammer looked for gut microbes in faeces from geese and bats, he found none.