Host‐associated microbiota can be affected by factors related to environmental change, such as urbanization and invasive species. For example, urban areas often affect food availability for animals, which can change their gut microbiota. Invasive parasites can also influence microbiota through competition or indirectly through a change in the host immune response. These interacting factors can have complex effects on host fitness, but few studies have disentangled the relationship between urbanization and parasitism on an organism's gut microbiota. To address this gap in knowledge, we investigated the effects of urbanization and parasitism by the invasive avian vampire fly (
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The role of species interactions, as well as genetic and environmental factors, all likely contribute to the composition and structure of the gut microbiome; however, disentangling these independent factors under field conditions represents a challenge for a functional understanding of gut microbial ecology. Avian brood parasites provide unique opportunities to investigate these questions, as brood parasitism results in parasite and host nestlings being raised in the same nest, by the same parents. Here we utilized obligate brood parasite brown‐headed cowbird nestlings (BHCO;
- Award ID(s):
- 2305848
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10490105
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Molecular Ecology
- Volume:
- 33
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 0962-1083
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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