The influence of species identity and geographic locations on gut microbiota of small rodents

Abstract

Although the correlation between gut microbiota, species identity and geographic locations has long attracted the interest of scientists, to what extent species identity and geographic locations influence the gut microbiota assemblages in granivorous rodents needs further investigation. In this study, we performed a survey of gut microbial communities of four rodent species (Apodemus agrarius, A. peninsulae, Tamias sibiricus and Clethrionomys rufocanus) distributed in two areas with great distance (> 600 km apart), to assess if species identity dominates over geographic locations in shaping gut microbial profiles using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. We found that gut microbiota composition varied significantly across host species and was closely correlated with host genetics. We identified strong species identity effects on gut microbial composition, with a comparatively weaker signal of geographic provenance on the intestinal microbiota. Specifically, microbiota of one species was on average more similar to that of conspecifics living in separate sites than to members of a closely related species living in the same location. Our study suggests that both host genetics and geographical variations influence gut microbial diversity of four rodent species, which merits further investigation to reveal the patterns of phylogenetic correlation of gut microbial community assembly in mammals across multiple habitats.

Microclimate shapes the phylosymbiosis of rodent gut microbiota in Jordan’s Great Rift Valley

“…Host species account for less variance in the gut microbiota of rats in comparison to biogeography factors (Linnenbrink et al, 2013;Baxter et al, 2015;Teng et al, 2022) with host species, suggesting commonalities in gut microbiota among species (Nagpal et al, 2018;Weinstein et al, 2021;10.3389/fmicb.2023.1258775 Frontiers in Microbiology 12 frontiersin.org Doms et al, 2022). However, the host environment and genetics interact to shape phylosymbiosis (Griffiths et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2022). The core bacteria identified in this study may have important effects on health and fitness.…”

“…They showed that the environment has a greater effect than host species identity (Teng et al, 2022). In addition, the gut microbiome diversity of many rodent species is thought to be influenced by host genetic and geographic differences (Wang et al, 2022). Geographic trends in microbiota composition in human and mouse gut microbiomes have been recognized (Linnenbrink et al, 2013;Rehman et al, 2016;Suzuki et al, 2019).…”

Understanding the Diversity of Human Gut Microbes in Indigenous Populations Across the World

“…4,5,6,7,8,9,10 . The diversity of the human gut microbiome in both healthy 11,12,13 and sick 13 individuals is greatly in uenced by the geographic location and dietary history of a population. The gut microbiota of a healthy adult human, are dominated by two bacterial phyla Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes.…”

Capturing species‐wide diversity of the gut microbiota and its relationship with genomic variation in the critically endangered kākāpō

“…Host genetic background can also have substantial implications for microbiota composition (Zhernakova et al, 2016), though its role remains unexplored in most species given the need for large cohorts for which both genomic and microbiota data are available. While such datasets have recently been analysed for humans (Awany et al, 2019;Goodrich et al, 2016;Hall et al, 2017;Ishida et al, 2020) and some animal species (including rodents [Doms et al, 2022;Suzuki et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2015Wang et al, , 2022, ruminants and poultry [see Ryu & Davenport, 2022] and even wild baboons [Grieneisen et al, 2021]), to our knowledge a study on the relationship between the microbiota and host genome has not yet been undertaken for any threatened wildlife. Such information should help inform future efforts at microbiome engineering of threatened species (e.g.…”