Biology subjects

Blumstein, D.

Publications and source records attributed to Blumstein, D..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Beyond distance-decay: The Mississippi River shapes gut microbiome communities in the Peromyscus maniculatus species complex

Biogeographic barriers are fundamental in shaping the distribution of animals and plants, yet the role of discrete landscape features in constraining microbial dispersal remains poorly understood. Identifying the barriers that partition gut microbial communities is essential for modeling the distribution of hosts and their symbionts across physical space and evolutionary time. The deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus species complex), which inhabits nearly all terrestrial environments in North America, provides an ideal model for testing these biogeographic drivers of the mammalian gut microbiome. Using NSF NEON biorepository samples, we characterized the gut microbiomes of 13 populations across the contiguous United States using full-length 16S rRNA long-read sequencing. While we observed a consistent distance-decay relationship across the continent, our results reveal that the Mississippi River acts as a major biogeographic break, significantly increasing microbial dissimilarity beyond the levels predicted by geographic distance alone. This "river effect" suggests that large fluvial systems impose a discrete barrier to microbial transmission, likely due to restricted host dispersal. Furthermore, we identified specific microbial lineages that exhibit differential sensitivity to this barrier, suggesting a gradient in microbial acquisition patterns ranging from the environment to host-host transmission. Together, these findings demonstrate that the gut microbiome may act as a sensitive bio-indicator of landscape-level ecological connectivity, revealing that large-scale landscape barriers disrupt microbial transmission even among closely related host populations that lack reproductive barriers.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2024

When the tap runs dry: The multi-tissue gene expression and physiological responses of water deprived Peromyscus eremicus

The harsh and dry conditions of desert environments have resulted in genomic adaptations, allowing for desert organisms to withstand prolonged drought, extreme temperatures, and limited food resources. Here, we present a comprehensive exploration of gene expression across five tissues (kidney, liver, lung, gastrointestinal tract, and hypothalamus) and 19 phenotypic measurements to explore the whole-organism physiological and genomic response to water deprivation in the desert-adapted cactus mouse (Peromyscus eremicus). The findings encompass the identification of differentially expressed genes and correlative analysis between phenotypes and gene expression patterns across multiple tissues. Specifically, we found robust activation of the vasopressin renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) pathways, whose primary function is to manage water and solute balance. Animals reduce food intake during water deprivation, and upregulation of PCK1 highlights the adaptive response to reduced oral intake via its actions aimed at maintained serum glucose levels. Even with such responses to maintain water balance, hemoconcentration still occurred, prompting a protective downregulation of genes responsible for the production of clotting factors while simultaneously enhancing angiogenesis which is thought to maintains tissue perfusion. In this study, we elucidate the complex mechanisms involved in water balance in the desert-adapted cactus mouse, P. eremicus. By prioritizing a comprehensive analysis of whole-organism physiology and multi-tissue gene expression in a simulated desert environment, we describe the complex and successful response of regulatory processes.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2022

Urban birds' flight responses were unaffected by the COVID-19 shutdowns

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic dramatically altered human activities, and, during shutdowns. Here, we evaluated whether urban birds from five countries changed their tolerance towards humans during the COVID-19 shutdowns. We collected 6369 flight initiation distance estimates for 147 bird species and found that human numbers in parks (at a given hour, day, week or year - before and during the COVID-19 shutdowns) had a little effect on birds tolerance of approaching humans. Apart from the actual human numbers in the area (hourly scale), the effect of human activity at other temporal scales centered around zero. The results were similar across countries, for most species or when we restricted our analyses only to species sampled both before and during the COVID-19 shutdowns. As expected, the level of daily human presence in parks (measured by Google Mobility Reports) correlated negatively with the stringency of governmental restrictions (a weekly proxy for human presence) and was overall lower during COVID-19 shutdowns than during the post-shutdown year (2022). Our results highlight the resilience of birds to changes in human numbers on multiple temporal scales, the complexities of linking animal fear responses to human behavior, and the challenge of quantifying both simultaneously in situ.

animal behavior and cognition↗