Predictable and host-species specific humanization of the gut microbiota
in captive primates
Abstract
Humans and non-human primates (NHPs) harbor complex gut microbial
communities that affect phenotypes and fitness. The gut microbiotas of
wild NHPs reflect their hosts’ phylogenetic histories and are
compositionally distinct from those of humans, but in captivity the
endogenous gut microbial lineages of NHPs can be lost or replaced by
lineages found in humans. Despite its potential contributions to
gastrointestinal dysfunction, this humanization of the gut microbiota
has not been investigated systematically across captive NHP species.
Here we show through comparisons of well-sampled wild and captive
populations of apes and monkeys that the fraction of the gut microbiota
humanized by captivity varies significantly between NHP species but is
remarkably reproducible between captive populations of the same NHP
species. Conspecific captive populations displayed significantly greater
than expected overlap in the sets of bacterial 16S rRNA gene variants
that were differentially abundant between captivity and the wild. This
overlap was evident even between captive populations residing on
different continents but was never observed between heterospecific
captive populations. In addition, we developed an approach incorporating
human gut microbiota data to rank NHPs’ gut microbial clades based on
the propensity of their lineages to be lost or replaced by lineages
found in humans in captivity. Relatively few microbial genera displayed
reproducible degrees of humanization in different captive host species,
but most microbial genera were reproducibly humanized or retained from
the wild in conspecific pairs of captive populations. These results
demonstrate that the gut microbiotas of captive NHPs display
predictable, host-species specific responses to captivity.