Caecilians-microbiome-analysis

Caecilians are very secretive animals and the majority of them borrow in soil. We know very little about them as a result of this secretive habit #however they are incredible interesting to study because they engage in a form of unusual parental care in which the mother guard the eggs and also provide its skin to the attended juveniles to feed on which is known as skin feeding Because of all of these intricacies we investigated the microbiome of Herpele squalostoma which is known to exhibit parental care and engages in skin feeding H. squalostoma skin and gut microbiome, horizontal and vertical transmission in relation to parental care. We found strong evidence for vertical microbiome transmission between mother and juveniles. THis evidence was also as strong when we evaluated nitrogen isotopic content of mothers and their juveniles. THis work was published in Animal microbiome.