Gut microbiota differs between two cold-climate lizards distributed in thermally different regions.

ABSTRACT: The metabolic cold-climate adaption hypothesis predicts that animals from cold environments have relatively high metabolic rates compared with their warm-climate counterparts. However, studies testing this hypothesis are sparse. Here, we compared gut microbes between two cold-climate lizard species of the genus Phrynocephalus to see if gut microbiota could help lizards adapt to cold environments by promoting metabolism. We conducted a 2 species (P. erythrurus and P. przewalskii) × 2 temperatures (24 and 30 °C) factorial design experiment, whereby we kept lizards of two Phrynocephalus species at 24 and 30 °C for 25 d and then collected their fecal samples to analyze and compare the microbiota based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing technology. The gut microbiota was mainly composed of bacteria of

SUBMITTER: Chen JQ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9585762 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature