Phylosymbiosis: Relationships and Functional Effects of Microbial Communities across Host Evolutionary History.

ABSTRACT: Phylosymbiosis was recently proposed to describe the eco-evolutionary pattern, whereby the ecological relatedness of host-associated microbial communities parallels the phylogeny of related host species. Here, we test the prevalence of phylosymbiosis and its functional significance under highly controlled conditions by characterizing the microbiota of 24 animal species from four different groups (Peromyscus deer mice, Drosophila flies, mosquitoes, and Nasonia wasps), and we reevaluate the phylosymbiotic relationships of seven species of wild hominids. We demonstrate three key findings. First, intraspecific microbiota variation is consistently less than interspecific microbiota variation, and microbiota-based models predict host species origin with high accuracy across the dataset. Interest

SUBMITTER: Brooks AW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5115861 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature