Title

Maternal transmission as a microbial symbiont sieve

Abstract

With over 200 million years to evolve and theoretical evolutionary stability, why don't strictly monogamous mammals exhibit biparental lactation? Usually, the answers are around certainty of paternity, competition for mates, or sexual selection, but these are usually equally applicable to biparental care as a whole, which does evolve. In this talk, I will use a simple model to suggest an additional reason why biparental lactation specifically might not evolve: transmission of the gut microbiome. By linking theoretical microbiomes to the fitness of the host, we can examine how the population of hosts changes when new microbiomes invade.

We observe that biparental transmission leaves the door open for microbiomes that decrease the fitness of the host while uniparental transmission sieves out the microbiomes detrimental to the host. Allowing for environmental transmission provides conditions for uniparental transmission to evolve to a state of fixation. Finally, I will highlight path dependence and biological realities.

If you wish to attend this seminar online, please send an email to f.a.nobregasantos@uva.nl to receive the zoom-link.