Host Phylogeny Shapes Gut Microbiota and Predicted Functions in Captive Artiodactyls.

ABSTRACT: Host phylogeny can imprint the gut microbiota, but it is often masked by diet and environment. Leveraging the standardized husbandry of a zoological collection, we profiled fecal microbiota from 55 captive artiodactyls representing 12 species in Bovidae, Cervidae, and Camelidae using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing targeting the V3-V4 region on the Illumina MiSeq platform. Community composition differed significantly among host families (Bray-Curtis PERMANOVA, R² = 0.1075, p = 0.001). A host-microbiota tanglegram, which juxtaposes the host phylogeny with a dendrogram of microbiota similarity, recovered a topology congruent with the host phylogeny, with camelids forming a distinct branch separate from true ruminants in both trees. The linear discriminant analysis effect size

SUBMITTER: Sun G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12566460 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature