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<p>Parental care has evolved promote fitness gains. Burying beetles engage in extensive pre-
hatching and post-hatching parental care providing several avenues to transmit bacteria to their
offspring. One aspect of pre-hatching parental care consists of preserving a small vertebrate
carcass via oral and anal secretions, allowing the carcass to be used as a reproductive resource.
Post-hatching parental care consists in large part of parental regurgitations of the preserved
carcass. We sought to determine if pre-hatching parental care resulted in bacterial transmission
from adults to carcasses via anal secretions. We then sought to determine if lab-rearing conditions
affected the digestive tract bacterial communities of F1 and F2 generation adults. We finally sought
to determine if carcasses and post-hatching parental care in the form of parental regurgitations
resulted into bacterial transmission to larvae. Using High-Throughput Illumina MiSeq, we were
able to characterize bacterial communities of adult and larval digestive tracts, anal secretions, and
unprepared and prepared carcasses. Our results show that bacterial communities of adults are
dissimilar from anal secretions and prepared carcasses. We then show that lab-rearing conditions
do not significantly alter digestive tract bacterial communities of F1 and F2 generation adults
relative to wild caught adults. We proceed to show that larvae receiving parental regurgitations
have digestive tract bacterial communities similar to their parents whereas larvae that do not
receive parental regurgitations have dissimilar digestive tract bacterial communities from their
parents. We further show that bacterial communities of prepared carcasses are dissimilar from all
larvae. Our evidence suggests that anal secretions to preserve carcasses for the reproductive bout
and have no influence on bacterial transmission to neither carcasses nor larvae. Our evidence also
suggests that parental regurgitations influence bacterial transmission to offspring.
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| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/8061860 |
| Date | 11 June 2019 |
| Creators | Christopher Miller (6651161) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/Effect_of_Parental_Care_on_the_Verical_Transmission_of_Enteric_Bacteria_in_i_Nicrophorus_Defodiens_i_/8061860 |
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