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Qualitative study examined development of psychosocial attributes- sense of belonging, science identity, and self-efficacy- among first-year life science undergraduate students who participated in integrated and culturally engaging research activities at a rural Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). 

Abstract Hosts and their associated microbes can enter into different relationships, which can range from mutualism, where both partners benefit, to exploitation, where one partner benefits at the expense of the other. Many host–microbe relationships have been presumed to be mutualistic, but frequently only benefits to the host, and not the microbial symbiont, have been considered. Here, we address this issue by looking at the effect of host association on the fitness of two facultative members of theDictyostelium discoideummicrobiome (Burkholderia agricolarisandBurkholderia hayleyella). Using two indicators of bacterial fitness, growth rate and abundance, we determined the effect ofD. discoideumonBurkholderiafitness. In liquid culture, we found thatD. discoideumamoebas lowered the growth rate of bothBurkholderiaspecies. In soil microcosms, we tracked the abundance ofBurkholderiagrown with and withoutD. discoideumover a month and found thatB. hayleyellahad larger populations when associating withD. discoideumwhileB. agricolariswas not significantly affected. Overall, we find that bothB. agricolarisandB. hayleyellapay a cost to associate withD. discoideum, butB. hayleyellacan also benefit under some conditions. Understanding how fitness varies in facultative symbionts will help us understand the persistence of host–symbiont relationships. OPEN RESEARCH BADGESThis article has earned an Open Data Badge for making publicly available the digitally‐shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results. The data is available athttps://openscholarship.wustl.edu/data/15/