Sympatric chimpanzees and gorillas harbor convergent gut microbial communities.

ABSTRACT: The gut microbial communities within great apes have been shown to reflect the phylogenetic history of their hosts, indicating codiversification between great apes and their gut microbiota over evolutionary timescales. But because the great apes examined to date represent geographically isolated populations whose diets derive from different sources, it is unclear whether this pattern of codiversification has resulted from a long history of coadaptation between microbes and hosts (heritable factors) or from the ecological and geographic separation among host species (environmental factors). To evaluate the relative influences of heritable and environmental factors on the evolution of the great ape gut microbiota, we assayed the gut communities of sympatric and allopatric populations of chim

SUBMITTER: Moeller AH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3787267 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature