Fishing for the holobiont

Tropical fish that can tolerate the cold also have gut microbes that cope well with changes in temperature.

Image credit: Public domain (CC0)

Animals and plants host diverse microbial communities that are vital for their survival. In fact, the host organisms and their associated ‘microbiome’ are so closely linked that they are often described as a single entity: the holobiont unit. This suggests that when the host adapts to cope with stressful conditions, similar changes should also occur in its microbiome.

Fish are unable to maintain a stable body temperature and can be greatly affected by temperature fluctuations. Some fish are better able to tolerate cold conditions than others, but it was not known if their gut microbes are similarly affected by changes in temperature.

To investigate, Kokou et al. selectively bred tropical blue tilapia to create families of fish that could either tolerate the cold well, or that were highly sensitive to the cold. The gut microbiomes of cold-resistant fish were different from the cold-sensitive ones, even though the fish lived in the same tank. Moreover, the gut microbiomes of the cold-tolerant fish showed higher resilience to temperature changes than the microbes in the guts of the cold-sensitive fish.

It remains to be determined whether the response of the microbiome directly affects how its host fish responds to temperature changes. However, the results presented by Kokou et al. show that there are links between how the host and its microbes adapt to environmental stress. As well as helping us to understand how holobionts evolved, this knowledge could also potentially be applied broadly in clinical sciences or agriculture, for example to select for efficient crops.