Within‐community variation of interspecific divergence patterns in passerine gut microbiota

Abstract

Multicellular eukaryotic lifeforms are inevitably exposed to interactions with microorganisms, including bacteria, throughout their phylogeny and ontogeny (McFall-Ngai et al., 2013). In animals, the quantity of associated bacterial cells represents a significant fraction of all cells forming the host's body (Sender et al., 2016). A similar situation applies for the total gene count of the bacterial community, which outnumbers the host's gene count by a factor of approx.