Diet components associated with specific bacterial taxa shape overall
gut community compositions in omnivorous African viverrids
- Malou Storm,
- Emilia Langkjær,
- Phumlile Simelane,
- Jason Denlinger,
- Celina Dias,
- Ana da Conceição,
- Ara Monadjem,
- Kristine Bohmann,
- Michael Poulsen,
- Kasun Bodawatta
Kristine Bohmann
University of Copenhagen Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences
Author ProfileAbstract
Gut bacterial communities provide flexibility to hosts during dietary
changes. Despite the increasing number of studies exploring the
associations between broader dietary guilds of mammalian hosts and their
gut bacteria, it is generally unclear how diversity and variability in
consumed diets link to gut bacteria in wild non-primate mammals. Here we
contribute to filling this gap by exploring consumed diets and gut
bacterial community compositions with metabarcoding of faecal samples
for two African mammals, Civettictis civetta and Genetta spp., from the
family Viverridae. For each individual sample, we characterised
bacterial communities and identified dietary taxa by sequencing
vertebrate, invertebrate, and plant markers. This led us to establish
diet compositions that diverged from what has previously been found from
visual identification methods. Specifically, while the two genera have
been categorised into the same dietary guild, we detected more animal
dietary items than plant items in C. Civetta, while in Genetta spp. we
observed an opposite pattern. We further found that individuals with
similar diets have similar gut bacterial communities in both species.
This association tended to be driven by specific associations of dietary
items to specific gut bacterial taxa, rather than entire communities,
implying diet-driven selection for specific gut microbes in individual
wild hosts. Our findings underline the importance of molecular tools for
improving characterisations of wild mammalian diets and highlight the
opportunities for simultaneously disentangling links between diets and
gut symbionts. Such insights can inform robustness and flexibility in
host-microbe symbioses to dietary change associated with seasonal and
habitat change.13 Mar 2024Submitted to Ecology and Evolution 19 Mar 2024Editorial Decision: Revise Minor
08 May 20241st Revision Received
15 May 2024Submission Checks Completed
15 May 2024Assigned to Editor
15 May 2024Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
15 May 2024Editorial Decision: Accept