Testing for Consistency in Co-occurrence Patterns Among Bacterial Taxa Across the Microbiomes of Four Different Trematode Parasites

Elucidating the specific processes and drivers of community assembly in the host microbiome is essential to fully understand host biology. Toward this goal, an important first step is to describe co-occurrence patterns among different microbial taxa, which can be driven by numerous factors, such as host identity. While host identity can be an important influential factor on co-occurrence patterns, a limited number of studies have explored the relative importance of host identity after controlling for other environmental factors. Here, we examined microbial co-occurrence patterns in four phylogenetically distinct trematode species living within the same snail species, collected concomitantly from the same habitat. Our previous study determined that all these trematodes shared some bacterial taxa, and the relative abundance of microbial taxa differed among trematodes, possibly due to differences in their eco-physiological traits. Here, we specifically predict that pairwise microbial co-occurrence patterns also vary among trematode host species. Our results showed that co-occurrence patterns among eight microbial families varied greatly among the four trematode hosts, with some microbial families co-occurring in some trematode species, whereas no such patterns were observed in other trematodes. Our study suggests that the habitat identity (trematode species) and its associated biotic characteristics, such as physiological and ecological traits, can determine co-occurrence patterns among microbial taxa, with substantial effects on local community composition.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Microbial Ecology

• Publication date

  2025-05-17

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s00248-025-02545-wPMID 40382531PMCID 12085397
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Does the host matter? Testing the impact of host identity on the microbiome of a trematode parasite

  2025cited by this paper
• Enterobacteriaceae community dynamics in sleepy lizards: Richness, prevalence and co‐occurrence over time

  2024influential reference
• Microbial community composition in the dung of five sympatric European herbivore species

  2024cited by this paper
• Adoption of alternative life cycles in a parasitic trematode is linked to microbiome differences

  2023cited by this paper
• Host-Specific Differences in Gut Microbiota Between Cricetulus barabensis and Phodopus sungorus

  2023influential reference
• Different trematode parasites in the same snail host: Species‐specific or shared microbiota?

  2023influential reference
• Host phenotype and microbiome vary with infection status, parasite genotype, and parasite microbiome composition

  2022cited by this paper
• Species abundance correlations carry limited information about microbial network interactions

  2022cited by this paper
• Elevational Changes in Bacterial Microbiota Structure and Diversity in an Arthropod-Disease Vector

  2021cited by this paper
• Consistency of Bacterial Communities in a Parasitic Worm: Variation Throughout the Life Cycle and Across Geographic Space

  2021cited by this paper
• microeco: An R package for data mining in microbial community ecology.

  2020influential reference
• Environment and host species identity shape gut microbiota diversity in sympatric herbivorous mammals

  2020cited by this paper
• Persistence of a Core Microbiome Through the Ontogeny of a Multi-Host Parasite

  2020cited by this paper
• Use and abuse of correlation analyses in microbial ecology

  2019cited by this paper
• Bacterial microbiota composition of Ixodes ricinus ticks: the role of environmental variation, tick characteristics and microbial interactions

  2019cited by this paper
• Reproducible, interactive, scalable and extensible microbiome data science using QIIME 2

  2019influential reference
• Parasite microbiome project: Grand challenges

  2019cited by this paper
• Priority effects can persist across floral generations in nectar microbial metacommunities

  2018influential reference
• Allometry and Ecology of the Bilaterian Gut Microbiome

  2018cited by this paper
• Evolutionary trends in host physiology outweigh dietary niche in structuring primate gut microbiomes

  2018influential reference
• Taxonomic classification for microbiome analysis, which correlates well with the metabolite milieu of the gut

  2018cited by this paper
• When habitat matters: Habitat preferences can modulate co-occurrence patterns of similar sympatric species

  2017cited by this paper
• Every base matters: assessing small subunit rRNA primers for marine microbiomes with mock communities, time series and global field samples.

  2016cited by this paper
• Vertebrate bacterial gut diversity: size also matters

  2016cited by this paper
• DADA2: High resolution sample inference from Illumina amplicon data

  2016influential reference
• Ecology of bacteria in the human gastrointestinal tract—identification of keystone and foundation taxa

  2015cited by this paper
• Minor revision to V4 region SSU rRNA 806R gene primer greatly increases detection of SAR11 bacterioplankton

  2015cited by this paper
• The ecology of the microbiome: Networks, competition, and stability

  2015cited by this paper
• Demonstrating microbial co-occurrence pattern analyses within and between ecosystems

  2014cited by this paper
• The gut microbiota — masters of host development and physiology

  2013cited by this paper
• Flowers as Islands: Spatial Distribution of Nectar-Inhabiting Microfungi among Plants of Mimulus aurantiacus, a Hummingbird-Pollinated Shrub

  2012cited by this paper
• Gut microbiota instead of host genotype drive the specificity in the interaction of a natural host-parasite system.

  2012cited by this paper
• Interactions Between the Microbiota and the Immune System

  2012cited by this paper
• Phylogenetic conservatism of functional traits in microorganisms

  2012cited by this paper
• Normal gut microbiota modulates brain development and behavior

  2011cited by this paper
• Toward an Efficient Method of Identifying Core Genes for Evolutionary and Functional Microbial Phylogenies

  2011cited by this paper
• Small worms, big appetites: ratios of different functional morphs in relation to interspecific competition in trematode parasites.

  2011cited by this paper
• Trematode parasites of Otago Harbour (New Zealand) soft‐sediment intertidal ecosystems: Life cycles, ecological roles and DNA barcodes

  2009influential reference
• A new cercaria and metacercaria of Acanthoparyphium (Echinostomatidae) found in an intertidal snail Zeacumantus subcarinatus (Batillaridae) from New Zealand.

  2006cited by this paper
• DESCRIPTION AND PROPOSED LIFE CYCLE OF MARITREMA NOVAEZEALANDENSIS N. SP. (MICROPHALLIDAE) PARASITIC IN RED-BILLED GULLS, LARUS NOVAEHOLLANDIAE SCOPULINUS, FROM OTAGO HARBOR, SOUTH ISLAND, NEW ZEALAND

  2004cited by this paper
• Cooperation, virulence and siderophore production in bacterial parasites

  2003cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.