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Vertebrate gut microbiota form a key component of immunity and a dynamic link between an individual and the ecosystem. Microbiota might play a role in social systems as well, because microbes are transmitted during social contact and can affect host behaviour. Combining methods from behavioural and molecular research, we describe the relationship between social dynamics and gut microbiota of a group-living cooperative species of primate, the red-bellied lemur (Eulemur rubriventer). Specifically, we ask whether patterns of social contact (group membership, group size, position in social network, individual sociality) are associated with patterns of gut microbial composition (diversity and similarity) between individuals and across time. Red-bellied lemurs were found to have gut microbiota with slight temporal fluctuations and strong social group-specific composition. Contrary to expectations, individual sociality was negatively associated with gut microbial diversity. However, position within the social network predicted gut microbial composition. These results emphasize the role of the social environment in determining the microbiota of adult animals. Since social transmission of gut microbiota has the potential to enhance immunity, microbiota might have played an escalating role in the evolution of sociality., (© 2017 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology © 2017 British Ecological Society.)

Social welfare, better health care, and urbanization have greatly improved human health and well-being. On the other hand, Western societies suffer from the downsides of the elevated standard of living. Among other factors, the Western diet (poor in dietary fiber), lack of contact with natural biodiversity, and excessive antibiotic use are known to be associated with the increase in chronic inflammatory disorders. Limited exposure to microbial biodiversity, in combination with severe lifestyle-related disturbances to commensal microbial communities, especially during early life, is changing the diversity and composition of human microbiota. In this review, we try to promote and apply ecological theory to understand the dynamics and diversity of human commensal microbiota. In this context, we explore the changes in the microbiota that are relevant to human health, especially in light of the rise of chronic inflammatory disorders. We try to elucidate the underlying ecological mechanisms behind these disorders and provide potential solutions for their avoidance., (© 2017 New York Academy of Sciences.)

Purpose of Review: It has been proposed that biodiversity loss leads to reduced interaction between environmental and human microbiotas. This, in turn, may lead to immune dysfunction and impaired tolerance mechanisms in humans. That is, contact with environmental biodiversity is expected to protect from allergies. However, direct evidence linking contact with biodiversity and risk of allergy has been lacking. In this review, we consider the latest research on the biodiversity hypothesis of allergy., Recent Findings: It is becoming clear that what you eat, drink, inhale, and touch all contribute to the grand scheme of host-microbial crosstalk that is needed for a balanced, healthy immune system to develop and maintain a healthy recognition between harmful and harmless invasions. Microbes can either communicate directly with host immune cells or affect the host via metabolism that can even lead to epigenetic modifications. Our living environment plays a key role in this process. Although especially, early exposure to diverse, beneficial microbiota from the environment is repeatedly found crucial, studies on immigrants demonstrate that condition in later life can also be decisive., Conclusion: We are still lacking a more detailed understanding of the interaction between natural, environmental biodiversity, and health, which calls for new innovative and more long-term investigations. The outcomes should be utilized in policy and urban planning efforts, promoting human interaction with natural biodiversity, and supporting a healthy lifestyle.

Understanding the mechanisms that underlie the relationship between community diversity and biomass stability is a fundamental topic in ecology. Theory has emphasized differences in species-specific responses to environmental fluctuations as an important stabiliser of total biomass fluctuations. However, previous analyses have often been based on simplifying assumptions, such as uniform species abundance distributions, uniform environmental variance across species, and uniform environmental responses across species pairs. We compare diversity-stability relationships in model communities, based on multi-species Ricker dynamics, that follow different colonization rules during community assembly (fixed or flexible resource use) forced by temporally uncorrelated (white) or correlated (red) environmental fluctuations. The colonization rules generate characteristic niche-dependent (hierarchical, HR) environmental covariance structures, which we compare with uncorrelated (independent, IR) species' environmental responses. Environmental reddening increases biomass stability and qualitatively alters diversity-stability patterns in HR communities, under both colonization rules. Diversity-stability patterns in IR communities are qualitatively altered by colonization rules but not by environmental colour. Our results demonstrate that diversity-stability patterns are contingent upon species' colonization strategies (resource use), emergent or independent responses to environmental fluctuations, and the colour of environmental fluctuations. We describe why our results arise through differences in species traits associated with niche position. These issues are often overlooked when considering the statistical components commonly used to describe diversity-stability patterns (e.g., Overyielding, Portfolio and Covariance effects). Mechanistic understanding of different diversity-stability relationships requires consideration of the biological processes that drive different population and community level behaviours., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The relationship between community diversity and biomass variability remains a crucial ecological topic, with positive, negative and neutral diversity-stability relationships reported from empirical studies. Theory highlights the relative importance of Species-Species or Species-Environment interactions in driving diversity-stability patterns. Much previous work is based on an assumption of identical (stable) species-level dynamics. We studied ecosystem models incorporating stable, cyclic and more complex species-level dynamics, with either linear or non-linear density dependence, within a locally stable community framework. Species composition varies with increasing diversity, interacting with the correlation of species' environmental responses to drive either positive or negative diversity-stability patterns, which theory based on communities with only stable species-level dynamics fails to predict. Including different dynamics points to new mechanisms that drive the full range of diversity-biomass stability relationships in empirical systems where a wider range of dynamical behaviours are important., (© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS.)