Interacciones ecológicas aves-bacterias: implicación durante el desarrollo de los pollos en el nido
Sonia González Braojos defended the PhD Thesis at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the Complutense University of Madrid
March 28th, 2014
The effects of bacteria on the development of birds in the nest have been barely studied under natural conditions and most of our knowledge about this topic derives from poultry as interactions between potentially pathogenic bacteria and chickens have economic and public health implications. In wild birds, there is scant evidence suggesting negative effects of gut bacteria on nestling growth. However not only gut bacteria may have effects on nestling growth as other microbiota such as those existing on the nest or on skin could affect development. Early development is a crucial determinant of fitness in many animals. In birds, in addition to some environmental factors, the body mass at fledging as well as body condition and measures of immunocompetence, have been shown to be reasonably good predictors of individual post-fledging survival. The main goal of this thesis is to increase our knowledge about the interactions between growing altricial birds and microorganisms under natural conditions from an ecological and evolutionary point of view as traditionally nestling growth has been studied without consideration of microbial effects. Furthermore the thesis explores potential adverse effects of bacterial gut and skin symbionts on nestling growth and thereby on fitness. As there may be resource-allocation trade-offs between immunity development and tissue growth, the different arms of the immune system in nestlings have also been studied.
