Mette Marie Busck

The microbiome of social spiders
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My PhD project is based on the hypothesis that the microbiome of social spiders plays a key role in their ability to adapt to a wide range of environments and resist pathogens in spite of a limited genomic potential. The goal of the project will be to disentangle the symbiotic host-microbe interactions that allow such adaptation to take place. Because these spiders are genetically homozygous, we have a unique opportunity for determining robust causal links between phenotypic traits and the microbiome in different environments across a standardized genetic background.