What is it about?
Toxin-producing cyanobacteria can be harmful to aquatic biota, although some grazers utilize them with often beneficial effects on their growth and reproduction. Here, we show how gut microbiota facilitates host adaptation to the cyanobacteria-rich diet.
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Photo by Ivan Bandura on Unsplash
Why is it important?
We describe how biodegraders in the copepod microbiome facilitate nutrient uptake and growth when feeding on toxin-producing cyanobacteria. Grazers with high levels of biodegraders in the gut have a selective advantage in ecosystems suffering frequent cyanobacteria blooms.
Perspectives
The toxin-degrading gut microbiota provides an ecological adaptation mechanism to the cyanobacteria blooms. Such microbiomes may become more important when cyanobacteria blooms increase world-wide as a result of global change.
Elena Gorokhova
Stockholm University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: How Copepods Can Eat Toxins Without Getting Sick: Gut Bacteria Help Zooplankton to Feed in Cyanobacteria Blooms, Frontiers in Microbiology, January 2021, Frontiers,
DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.589816.
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