Seasonal dietary changes relate to gut microbiota composition depending on the host species but do not correlate with gut microbiota diversity in arthropod-eating lizards

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningfagfællebedømt

  • Mauricio Hernández
  • Sergio Ancona
  • Stephanie Hereira-Pacheco
  • Aníbal H. Díaz de la Vega-Pérez
  • Alberdi Estibaritz, Antton
  • Yendi E. Navarro-Noya

The animal gut microbiota is strongly influenced by environmental factors that shape their temporal dynamics. Although diet is recognized as a major driver of gut microbiota variation, dietary patterns have seldom been linked to gut microbiota dynamics in wild animals. Here, we analysed the gut microbiota variation between dry and rainy seasons across four Sceloporus species (S. aeneus, S. bicanthalis, S. grammicus and S. spinosus) from central Mexico in light of temporal changes in diet composition. The lizard microbiota was dominated by Firmicutes (now Bacillota) and Bacteroidota, and the closely related species S. aeneus and S. bicanthalis shared a great number of core bacterial taxa. We report species-specific seasonal changes in gut microbiota diversity and composition: greater alpha diversity during the dry compared to the rainy season in S. bicanthalis, the opposite pattern in S. aeneus, and no seasonal differences in S. grammicus and S. spinosus. Our findings indicated a positive association between gut bacterial composition and dietary composition for S. bicanthalis and S. grammicus, but bacterial diversity did not increase linearly with dietary richness in any lizard species. In addition, seasonality affected bacterial composition, and microbial community similarity increased between S. aeneus and S. bicanthalis, as well as between S. grammicus and S. spinosus. Together, our results illustrate that seasonal variation and dietary composition play a role in shaping gut microbiota in lizard populations, but this is not a rule and other ecological factors influence microbiota variation.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftMolecular Ecology
Antal sider15
ISSN0962-1083
DOI
StatusE-pub ahead of print - 2024

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
Funding was provided by the (CONAHCyT): project number: 205945, project number: 137748 and project number: 883. MH received Ph.D. scholarship number: 967648. Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencias y Tecnolog\u00EDas Infraestructura Ciencia de Frontera C\u00E1tedras CONAHCyT

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Molecular Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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