Scientists have long known of the important roles played by the microbes on and in our bodies - our microbiomes. These little guys outnumber our own cells 10 to 1, and they help regulate everything from the energy we get out of food to the health of our immune systems. Now, scientists believe that the bugs help play another important role: the evolution of new species. Vanderbilt University biologists Seth Bordenstein and Robert Brucker were studying what distinguished similar wasp species. Specifically, they knew two closely related wasp species, Nasonia giraulti and Nasonia longicornis, could produce healthy hybrid offspring and that the two had a similar array of gut bacteria. But when either wasp tried to mate with the related Nasonia vitripennis, which has different gut microbes, those hybrid offspring died. Bordenstein and Brucker wanted to know whether these dissimilar microbiomes were the reason the N. vitripennis hybrids didn't make it.
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