Infectious diseases result from multiple interactions among microbes and hosts, but community ecology approaches are rarely applied. Manipulation of vector populations provides a unique opportunity to test the importance of vectors in infection cycles while also observing changes in pathogen community diversity and species interactions. Yet for many vector-borne infections in wildlife, a biological vector has not been experimentally verified and few manipulative studies have been performed. Using a captive colony of fruit bats in Ghana, we observed changes in the community of Bartonella bacteria over time after the decline and subsequent reintroduction of bat flies. With reduced transmission, community changes were attributed to ecological drift and potential selection through interspecies competition mediated by host immunity. This work demonstrated that forces maintaining diversity in communities of free-living macroorganisms act in similar ways in communities of symbiotic microorganisms, both within and among hosts. Additionally, this study is the first to experimentally test the role of bat flies as vectors of Bartonella species.

中文翻译：

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操纵载体的传播揭示了蝙蝠细菌群落中的局部过程

传染病是由微生物和宿主之间的多种相互作用导致的，但是很少采用社区生态学方法。对媒介种群的操纵为检验媒介在感染周期中的重要性提供了独特的机会，同时还可以观察到病原体群落多样性和物种相互作用的变化。然而，对于野生生物中许多媒介传播的感染，还没有通过实验验证过生物媒介，并且很少进行操纵性研究。利用加纳的一只蝙蝠圈养殖民地，我们观察到了蝙蝠蝇的下降和随后的重新引入后，巴尔通体细菌群落随时间的变化。随着传播的减少，社区变化被归因于生态漂移和宿主免疫介导的种间竞争的潜在选择。这项工作表明，在宿主内和宿主之间的共生微生物群落中，维持自由活动的大生物群落多样性的力量以相似的方式起作用。此外，这项研究是第一个通过实验测试蝙蝠蝇作为Bartonella物种载体的角色的研究。