The gut microbiome of blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, exhibits community resilience after disturbance with antibiotics via rapid recovery
A growing body of evidence suggests that microbial communities can respond to and recover from disturbance events. The resident prokaryotic community in the gut of blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, can be perturbed experimentally in the laboratory numerically and compositionally with antibiotics. It is unknown, however, if and how the gut community recovers after the cessation of antibiotic treatment and the return of the hosts to the natural environment. In the present experiment, mussels were exposed to antibiotics and then returned to the natural environment for one, three, or ten days of recovery to track patterns of prokaryotic community assemblage with 16S amplicon sequencing. The resident gut microbiome of M. edulis exhibited resilience to disturbance, with recovery in disturbance indicative metrics after one to three days. It is hypothesized that rapid recovery was mediated by prokaryotic dispersal and competition, in addition to aspects of the host suspension feeding physiology. The results also suggest that laboratory husbandry, on its own, can serve as a disturbance for resident gut communities, distinct from antibiotic disturbance, but for which recovery is also achievable. In addition to advancing microbial ecological theory, these results could shed more light onto how mussels may be affected by environmental disturbances because alterations in gut microbial communities have been linked to many aspects of host physiology. Understanding patterns and timescales of gut microbial recovery, therefore, has important implications for host ecology.
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