Data from: Microbial solutions to dietary stress: Experimental evolution reveals host-microbiome interplay in Drosophila melanogaster

Can the microbiome serve as a reservoir of adaptive potential for hosts?
To address this question, we leveraged ~150 generations of experimental
evolution in Drosophila melanogaster in a stressful, high-sugar (HS) diet.
We performed a fully reciprocal transplant experiment using the control
and HS bacteria. If the microbiome confers benefits to hosts, then
transplant recipients should gain fitness benefits compared to controls.
Interestingly, we found that such benefits exist, but their magnitude
depends on evolutionary history—mismatches between fly evolution and
microbiome reduced fecundity and potentially exerted fitness costs,
especially in the stressful HS diet. The dominant HS bacteria
(​​Acetobacter pasteurianus) uniquely encoded several genes to enable uric
acid degradation, mediating the toxic effects of uric acid accumulation
due to the HS diet for flies. Our study demonstrates that host genotype x
microbiome x environment interactions have substantial effects on host
phenotype, highlighting how host evolution and ecological context together
shape the adaptive potential of the microbiome.