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Updated: Oct 18, 2025

An Intestinal Gut Organ Culture System for Analyzing Host-Microbiota Interactions
Published on: June 30, 2021
Microbiome influence on host community dynamics: Conceptual integration of microbiome feedback with classical
Karen C Abbott1, Maarten B Eppinga2,3, James Umbanhowar4
1Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
Abstract:
Microbiomes have profound effects on host fitness, yet we struggle to understand the implications for host ecology. Microbiome influence on host ecology has been investigated using two independent frameworks. Classical ecological theory powerfully represents mechanistic interactions predicting environmental dependence of microbiome effects on host ecology, but these models are notoriously difficult to evaluate empirically. Alternatively, host-microbiome feedback theory represents impacts of microbiome dynamics on host fitness as simple net effects that are easily amenable to experimental evaluation. The feedback framework enabled rapid progress in understanding microbiomes' impacts on plant ecology, and can also be applied to animal hosts. We conceptually integrate these two frameworks by deriving expressions for net feedback in terms of mechanistic model parameters. This generates a precise mapping between net feedback theory and classic population modelling, thereby merging mechanistic understanding with experimental tractability, a necessary step for building a predictive understanding of microbiome influence on host ecology.
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