Phylogenetic Comparative Approach Reveals Evolutionary Conservatism, Ancestral Composition, and Integration of Vertebrate Gut Microbiota.

ABSTRACT: How host-associated microbial communities evolve as their hosts diversify remains equivocal: how conserved is their composition? What was the composition of ancestral microbiota? Do microbial taxa covary in abundance over millions of years? Multivariate phylogenetic models of trait evolution are key to answering similar questions for complex host phenotypes, yet they are not directly applicable to relative abundances, which usually characterize microbiota. Here, we extend these models in this context, thereby providing a powerful approach for estimating phylosymbiosis (the extent to which closely related host species harbor similar microbiota), ancestral microbiota composition, and integration (evolutionary covariations in bacterial abundances). We apply our model to the gut microbiota of

SUBMITTER: Perez-Lamarque B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10326836 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature