Microbiome Structural and Functional Interactions across Host Dietary Niche Space.

Area of Science:

• Microbial ecology
• Host-microbiome interactions
• Metagenomics

Background:

• Host-associated microbiomes are crucial for health, yet their structure varies.
• Understanding microbiome variability and its functional consequences across niches is challenging.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how gut microbiome community structure and function relate to diet in insectivorous bats.
• To characterize the drivers of metagenomic differences across ecologically similar hosts.

Main Methods:

• Comparative analysis of gut microbiomes and diets in three bat species.
• Application of a novel inference framework to analyze metagenome function and community structure.
• Investigation of gene set sharing across microbial lineages.

Main Results:

• Host diet did not significantly correlate with microbiome community composition.
• Host diet significantly correlated with predicted metagenome function.
• Functional equivalence and shared/derived gene sets explain the discordance between microbiome structure and function.

Conclusions:

• Diet directly selects for metagenomic functions rather than microbial communities.
• Functional equivalence and microbial gene evolution contribute to deterministic community assembly.
• Metagenomic differences in similar hosts are explained by diet-driven functional selection and microbial lineage gene content.