Cited by 78Aquatic life and conservationAquaculture disease management and microbiotaGut microbiota and health

Microbial embryonal colonization during pipefish male pregnancy

Open access
Beemelmanns, Anne, Poirier, Maude, Bayer, Till, Kuenzel, Sven, Roth, Olivia·2019·Scientific Reports

Abstract

While originally acquired from the environment, a fraction of the microbiota is transferred from parents to offspring. The immune system shapes the microbial colonization, while commensal microbes may boost host immune defences. Parental transfer of microbes in viviparous animals remains ambiguous, as the two transfer routes (transovarial vs. pregnancy) are intermingled within the maternal body. Pipefishes and seahorses (syngnathids) are ideally suited to disentangle transovarial microbial transfer from a contribution during pregnancy due to their maternal egg production and their unique male pregnancy. We assessed the persistency and the changes in the microbial communities of the maternal and paternal reproductive tracts over proceeding male pregnancy by sequencing microbial 16S rRNA genes of swabs from maternal gonads and brood pouches of non-pregnant and pregnant fathers. Applying parental immunological activation with heat-killed bacteria, we evaluated the impact of parental immunological status on microbial development. Our data indicate that maternal gonads and paternal brood pouches harbor distinct microbial communities, which could affect embryonal development in a sex-specific manner. Upon activation of the immune system, a shift of the microbial community was observed. The activation of the immune system induced the expansion of microbiota richness during late pregnancy, which corresponds to the time point of larval mouth opening, when initial microbial colonization must take place.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/s41598-018-37026-3

Cites

91 of 91 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. [26]Blackburn, S. Maternal, Fetal, & Neonatal Physiology-E-Book (Elsevier Health Sciences, 2014).
  2. [85]Zuur, A., Ieno, E. N. & Smith, G. M. Analyzing ecological data (Springer Science & Business Media, 2007).
  3. [86]Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. & Walker, S. Fitting linear mixed-effects models usinglme4. arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.5823 (2014). · arXiv

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Beemelmanns, A., Poirier, M., Bayer, T., Kuenzel, S., & Roth, O.
Affiliations
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (DE)
Corresponding author
Roth, Olivia
Venue
Scientific Reports
Published
2019-01-09
Volume
9
Issue
1
Pages
3-3
ISSN
2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2910994391
Cited by
78
References
91
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 2
FWCI
11.36
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR) (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (4628/1-1)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Aquatic Science › Aquatic life and conservation
  • Life Sciences › Immunology and Microbiology › Immunology › Aquaculture disease management and microbiota
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Gut microbiota and health
Keywords
microbial colonization, pipefish, seahorse, syngnathids, male pregnancy, transovarial transmission, immune activation, heat-killed bacteria
MeSH terms
Animals, Female, Fishes, Immune System, Male, RNA, Ribosomal, 16S, Symbiosis, Embryonic Development, Viviparity, Nonmammalian, Microbiota

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review