A ridge-to-reef ecosystem microbial census reveals environmental reservoirs for animal and plant microbiomes.

ABSTRACT: Microbes are found in nearly every habitat and organism on the planet, where they are critical to host health, fitness, and metabolism. In most organisms, few microbes are inherited at birth; instead, acquiring microbiomes generally involves complicated interactions between the environment, hosts, and symbionts. Despite the criticality of microbiome acquisition, we know little about where hosts' microbes reside when not in or on hosts of interest. Because microbes span a continuum ranging from generalists associating with multiple hosts and habitats to specialists with narrower host ranges, identifying potential sources of microbial diversity that can contribute to the microbiomes of unrelated hosts is a gap in our understanding of microbiome assembly. Microbial dispersal attenuates with d

SUBMITTER: Amend AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9388140 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature