Comparative Analyses of Vertebrate Gut Microbiomes Reveal Convergence between Birds and Bats.

ABSTRACT: Diet and host phylogeny drive the taxonomic and functional contents of the gut microbiome in mammals, yet it is unknown whether these patterns hold across all vertebrate lineages. Here, we assessed gut microbiomes from ∼900 vertebrate species, including 315 mammals and 491 birds, assessing contributions of diet, phylogeny, and physiology to structuring gut microbiomes. In most nonflying mammals, strong correlations exist between microbial community similarity, host diet, and host phylogenetic distance up to the host order level. In birds, by contrast, gut microbiomes are only very weakly correlated to diet or host phylogeny. Furthermore, while most microbes resident in mammalian guts are present in only a restricted taxonomic range of hosts, most microbes recovered from birds show little e

SUBMITTER: Song SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6946802 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature