Abstract
Microbial symbiosis and speciation profoundly shape the composition of life’s biodiversity. Despite the enormous contributions of these two fields to the foundations of modern biology, there is a vast and exciting frontier ahead for research, literature, and conferences to address the neglected prospects of merging their study. Here, we survey and synthesize exemplar cases of how endosymbionts and microbial communities affect animal hybridization and vice versa. We conclude that though the number of case studies remain nascent, the wide-ranging types of animals, microbes, and isolation barriers impacted by hybridization will likely prove general and a major new phase of study that includes the microbiome as part of the functional whole contributing to reproductive isolation. Though microorganisms were proposed to impact animal speciation a century ago, the weight of the evidence supporting this view has now reached a tipping point.
Funder
vanderbilt microbiome initiative
searle undergraduate research program
national institutes of health
national science foundation
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Neuroscience
Cited by
15 articles.
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