Multi-Omics Approaches Revealed the Associations of Host Metabolism and Gut Microbiome With Phylogeny and Environmental Adaptation in Mountain Dragons

Abstract

The molecular basis enabling the adaptation of animals to spatially heterogeneous environments is a critical clue for understanding the variation, formation, and maintenance of biodiversity in the context of global climate change. Mountain dragons (Agamidae: Diploderma) thrive in the Hengduan Mountain Region, a biodiversity hotspot and a typical spatially heterogeneous environment. Here, we compare the liver and muscle metabolome and gut microbiome of 11 geographical populations from three Diploderma species (D. iadinum, D. yulongsense, and D. vela) after 7 days acclimation in the same laboratory conditions. Amino acid metabolism, particularly the products of the glutathione cycle, accounted for major interspecies variations, implying its significance in genetic differentiation among mountain dragons. Notably, the cold-dwelling D. vela and D. yulongense populations tended to have higher glycerophosphate, glycerol-3-phosphocholine, and kinetin levels in their liver, higher carnosine levels in their muscle, and higher Lachnospiraceae levels in their gut. Phylogeny, net primary productivity (NPP), and the temperature had the highest explanation rate to the variations in muscle metabolome, liver metabolome, and gut microbiome, respectively, suggesting heterogeneity of biological systems in response to climatic variations. Therefore, we suggested that the organ heterogeneity in environmental responsiveness might be substantial for mountain dragons to thrive in complicated environments.

Microbial diversity in mountain-dwelling amphibians: The combined effects of host and climatic factors

“…This aligns with our earlier investigations conducted on laboratory-acclimated lizards collected from various geographic sites. 64 , 65 Kueneman et al. 30 reported that amphibian skin alpha-diversity was consistently correlated with temperature-associated climatic factors.…”

Integrated omics analysis reveals the alteration of gut microbiota and fecal metabolites in Cervus elaphus kansuensis

“…Sequences with an exact match or 100% sequence similarity were selected as the final amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) and a table of characteristics was produced. Subsequently, the classify-sklearn module within the QIIME2 software (Version 2020.6.0, https://qiime2.org/ ) (Zhu et al 2022 ) package was used to compare the collected ASVs with the Silva database ( http://www.arb-silva.de/ ) (Quast et al 2013 ) using a confidence level of 99% to determine the taxonomy of each ASV.…”