Community assembly of the human piercing microbiome - presented by Dr. Charles Xu and Dr. Rowan Barrett and Dr. Daniel Rozen

Community assembly of the human piercing microbiome

Charles Xu and Rowan Barrett

Dr. Charles XuDr. Rowan Barrett
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Associated Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences article

C. C. Y. Xu et al. (2023) Community assembly of the human piercing microbiome. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Article of record
Community assembly of the human piercing microbiome
Dr. Charles Xu
Charles Xu
McGill University
Dr. Rowan Barrett
Rowan Barrett
McGill University
Chaired by Daniel Rozen

Predicting how biological communities respond to disturbance requires understanding the forces that govern their assembly. We propose using human skin piercings as a model system for studying community assembly after rapid environmental change. Local skin sterilization provides a ‘clean slate’ within the novel ecological niche created by the piercing. Stochastic assembly processes can dominate skin microbiomes due to the influence of environmental exposure on local dispersal, but deterministic processes might play a greater role within occluded skin piercings if piercing habitats impose strong selection pressures on colonizing species. Here we explore the human ear-piercing microbiome and demonstrate that community assembly is predominantly stochastic but becomes significantly more deterministic with time, producing increasingly diverse and ecologically complex communities. We also observed changes in two dominant and medically relevant antagonists (Cutibacterium acnes and Staphylococcus epidermidis), consistent with competitive exclusion induced by a transition from sebaceous to moist environments. By exploiting this common yet uniquely human practice, we show that skin piercings are not just culturally significant but also represent ecosystem engineering on the human body. The novel habitats and communities that skin piercings produce may provide general insights into biological responses to environmental disturbances with implications for both ecosystem and human health.

References
  • 1.
    C. C. Y. Xu et al. (2023) Community assembly of the human piercing microbiome. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Grants
    Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaRGPIN-2019-04549
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Ecology and evolution seminars
Royal Society Publishing
Cite as
C. Xu and R. Barrett (2024, February 1), Community assembly of the human piercing microbiome
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Video length 51:42
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