Evolutionary trends in host physiology outweigh dietary niche in structuring primate gut microbiomes.

ABSTRACT: Over the past decade several studies have reported that the gut microbiomes of mammals with similar dietary niches exhibit similar compositional and functional traits. However, these studies rely heavily on samples from captive individuals and often confound host phylogeny, gut morphology, and diet. To more explicitly test the influence of host dietary niche on the mammalian gut microbiome we use 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and shotgun metagenomics to compare the gut microbiota of 18 species of wild non-human primates classified as either folivores or closely related non-folivores, evenly distributed throughout the primate order and representing a range of gut morphological specializations. While folivory results in some convergent microbial traits, collectively we show that the infl

SUBMITTER: Amato KR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6461848 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature