Microbial transmission through mucosal-mediated mechanisms is widespread throughout
the animal kingdom. One example of this occurs with Hirudo verbana, the medicinal leech …

There are trillions of microbes found throughout the human body and they exceed the
number of eukaryotic cells by 10-fold. Metagenomic studies have revealed that the majority …

Leeches are found in terrestrial, aquatic, and marine habitats on all continents.
Sanguivorous leeches have been used in medicine for millennia. Modern scientific uses …

Strictly blood-feeding leeches and their limited microbiota provide natural and powerful
model systems to examine symbiosis. Blood is devoid of essential nutrients and it is thought …

Culture-based studies of the microbial community within the gut of the medicinal leech have
typically been focused on various Aeromonas species, which were believed to be the sole …

Digestive-tract microbiota exert tremendous influence over host health. Host-symbiont model
systems are studied to investigate how symbioses are initiated and maintained, as well as to …

Many monophagous animals have coevolutionary relationships with bacteria that provide
unavailable nutrients to the host. Frequently, these microbial partners are vertically inherited …

Transmission, critical to the establishment and persistence of host-associated microbiotas,
also exposes symbionts to new environmental conditions. With horizontal transmission …

Host-associated microbial communities are widespread in nature and vital to the health and
fitness of the host. Deciphering the physiology of the microbiome in vivo is critical to …

The vast majority of bacterial species remain uncultured, and this severely limits the
investigation of their physiology, metabolic capabilities, and role in the environment. High …