Island biogeography theory provides a plausible explanation for why larger vertebrates and taller humans have more diverse gut microbiomes.

ABSTRACT: Prior work has shown a positive scaling relationship between vertebrate body size, human height, and gut microbiome alpha diversity. This observation mirrors commonly observed species area relationships (SARs) in many other ecosystems. Here, we expand these observations to several large datasets, showing that this size-diversity scaling relationship is independent of relevant covariates, like diet, body mass index, age, sex, bowel movement frequency, antibiotic usage, and cardiometabolic health markers. Island biogeography theory (IBT), which predicts that larger islands tend to harbor greater species diversity through neutral demographic processes, provides a simple mechanism for positive SARs. Using a gut-adapted IBT model, we demonstrated that increasing the length of a flow-through eco

SUBMITTER: Ramos Sarmiento K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11253425 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature