Assembly of skin microbiomes is more neutral than gut microbiomes in multiple animal species.

ABSTRACT: The gut and external tissues of most animals are colonized by communities of microorganisms that can influence the health, development, and fitness of the host. The composition of these communities can vary greatly between individuals within a host species, and both selective factors (e.g., host immune response) and neutral processes (e.g., random loss of microbial cells) have been shown to contribute to this variation. Although it is known that microbiome composition differs between tissues within an individual host, less is known about the ecological processes that underlie these differences. To address this, we investigated whether the contribution of neutral ecological processes to microbiome assembly differs between external (skin and scale) and internal (gut) host tissues for a diver

SUBMITTER: Campbell KD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12671128 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature