Wormlike Animals are First Amphibians Shown to Pass Microbes to Their Offspring
Published:15 Aug.2023 Source:Florida Museum of Natural History
A new study shows that skin-feeding does more than provide nutrients for young caecilians. It also helps the mother pass microbes from her skin and gut down to her young, inoculating them to jump-start a healthy microbiome. This is the first direct evidence that parental care in an amphibian plays a role in passing microbes from one generation to the next.
"There's still a remarkable amount of caecilian biology that we just don't know anything about, mostly because they can be hard to find," said David Blackburn, the Florida Museum's curator of herpetology. "To our knowledge, this is the first published study of a caecilian microbiome."
Across the animal kingdom, there are many different strategies for parental care. Human mothers give their babies breastmilk, emperor penguins regurgitate food for their chicks, and female koalas feed their young a special form of feces.
Among amphibians, caecilians are unique for feeding their young at all. Previous efforts to understand amphibian microbiomes focused on frogs and salamanders, the more well-known orders of the Amphibia class. Those studies, however, came back inconclusive largely because there are few frog and salamander species that care for their young after they're born or hatched -- most simply lay eggs and leave them to develop on their own.