Sympatric chimpanzees and gorillas harbor convergent gut microbial communities
- Andrew Moeller1,
- Martine Peeters2,
- Jean-Basco Ndjango3,
- Yingying Li4,
- Beatrice Hahn4 and
- Howard Ochman1,5
- 1 Yale University;
- 2 University of Montpellier;
- 3 University of Kisangani;
- 4 University of Pennsylvania
- ↵* Corresponding author; email: howard.ochman{at}yale.edu
Abstract
The gut microbial communities within great apes have been shown to reflect the phylogenetic history of their hosts, indicating co-diversification between great apes and their gut microbiota over evolutionary timescales. But because the great apes examined to date represent geographically isolated populations whose diets derive from different sources, it is unclear whether this pattern of co-diversification has resulted from a long history of co-adaptation between microbes and hosts (heritable factors) or from the ecological and geographic separation among host species (environmental factors). To evaluate the relative influences of heritable and environmental factors on the evolution of the great ape gut microbiota, we assayed the gut communities of sympatric and allopatric populations of chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas residing throughout equatorial Africa. Comparisons of these populations revealed that the gut communities of different host species can always be distinguished from one another but that the gut communities of sympatric chimpanzees and gorillas have converged in terms of community composition, sharing on average 53% more bacterial phylotypes than the gut communities of allopatric hosts. Host environment, independent of host genetics and evolutionary history, shaped the distribution of bacterial phylotypes across the Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria, the four most common phyla of gut bacteria. Moreover, the specific patterns of phylotype sharing among hosts suggest that chimpanzees living in sympatry with gorillas have acquired bacteria from gorillas. These results indicate that geographic isolation between host species has promoted the evolutionary differentiation of great ape gut bacterial communities.
- Received January 10, 2013.
- Accepted June 19, 2013.
- © 2013, Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
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