Emergence of dauer larvae in Caenorhabditis elegans disrupts continuity of host-microbiome interactions

Nematodes are common in most terrestrial environments, where populations are often known to undergo cycles of boom and bust. Useful in such scenarios, nematodes present developmental programs of diapause, giving rise to stress-resistant larvae and enabling dispersal in search of new resources. Best studied in Caenorhabditis elegans, stress resistant dauer larvae emerge under adverse conditions, primarily starvation, and migrate to new niches where they can resume development and reproduce. Caenorhabditis elegans is a bacterivore but has been shown to harbor a persistent and characteristic gut microbiome. While much is known about the gut microbiome of reproducing C. elegans, what dauers harbor is yet unknown. This is of interest, as dauers are those that would enable transmission of microbes between nematode generations and geographical sites, maintaining continuity of host-microbe interactions. Using culture-dependent as well as sequencing-based approaches, we examined the gut microbiomes of dauers emerging following population growth on ten different natural-like microbially diverse environments as well as on two defined communities of known gut commensals and found that dauers were largely devoid of gut bacteria. These results suggest that host gut-microbiome interactions in C. elegans are not continuous across successive generations and may reduce the likelihood of long-term worm-microbe coevolution.