Echidna mothers change their pocket microbiome to protect the tiny “pink jelly bean” coins, new search results | Environment

When Echidna mothers are breastfeeding their young people, known as puggles, the microbiome of their pocket changes to protect their babies during their first weeks of life, new research revealed.

These first weeks are essential for puggles. At this stage of early development, they are tiny – roughly the size of a 5 cents – and vulnerable part.

“They cannot see and they do not have a functional immune system,” said Isabella Wilson, principal author of the study published in Ecology of microbiology fems.

The Echidnas lay their eggs in a temporary pocket, which they create by contracting their abdominal muscles. After about 10 days, the puggles hatch their eggs to look like, in Wilson's words, “Little Pink Jelly Beans”.

During lactation, probiotic bacteria of Echidna's pocket increased, which researchers at the University of Adelaide have suggested offer protection to pugles and their developmental systems in development.

The reproductive biology of Echidna is unique in many ways, said Wilson.

MONTREMES – Echidnas and Platpus – share a lot of “strange features”, she said. In addition to laying eggs, they lack nipples. So, instead of landing, friction rubs their beaks against part of the pseudo-poche called the patch of milk, bringing the milk out of the mother.

This milk, which is sometimes pink, has almost no lactose compared to that of most other animals.

“Young people hang out there [in the pseudo-pouch] For a few months, drink a lot of milk, ”said Wilson.

“Then, when they start to grow thorns, they sauté from the pocket in the burrow of the nursery – where they continue to feed on mom for about 200 days.”

An Echidna pocket is only temporary – it is there while a puggle is inside. The sanctuary of Healesville Echidna, Craig McQueen, who was not involved in research, agreed that the pugles generally stayed there for six to seven weeks, until their thorns become “too thorny” for mom.

He said that the Echidnas were curious animals that have invested a lot of time to raise their young people.

When they hatch from their egg the grape size, the paglots are without fur, blind and “seemed essentially that they should not have been born yet,” he said-that is why they need “additional development time” in the pocket.

The document explains that the reproductive microbiome, “which includes the vaginal, milk and breast microbiota, is increasingly recognized for its contributions to infant's health”. And in monotrimes and marsupials, it extends in the pocket.

The researchers analyzed the bacteria present on the swabs of the two captive animals of the Taronga zoo and wild echidnes on the island of Kangaroo. They found that the pocket microbiome had undergone significant changes during lactation, with an increase in lactic bacteria, generally considered to be probiotic.

They found no major difference between the microbiomas of animals managed by zoo and wild. Wilson said it suggested that milk, rather than external factors, is the main element shaping the environment of the pocket.