Cold exposure can prime greater resilience to future cold, but we do not know how widespread developmental thermal plasticity is among vertebrates. Gut microbiota may mediate thermal plasticity through adaptive energy mobilization to tissues involved in thermoregulation. In mammals, gut microbiota improve thermogenic capacity by promoting the browning of white fat. Few studies have investigated the potential for gut microbiota to mediate thermogenic capacity in birds, despite their role as a model system of skeletal muscle-based thermogenesis. My work investigates gut microbiota as a mediator of host thermal plasticity in captive and wild nestling tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor).
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As climate regimes shift, species will be exposed to drastically different thermal environments from the ones in which they evolved. Alterations in gut microbial diversity could serve as a mechanism for organisms to quickly adjust phenotype to prevailing environmental conditions. Microbial flexibility could affect an individual’s ability to breed earlier in the season. In many temperate breeding birds, earlier breeders have higher seasonal reproductive success. This work explores the hypothesis that microbial flexibility may affect an individual’s ability to shift phenotype including body mass, and therefore, could impact individual fitness and timing of breeding.
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