Abstract
Comparisons of mammalian gut microbiota across different environmental conditions shed light on the diversity and composition of gut bacteriome and suggest consequences for human and animal health. Gut bacteriome comparisons across different environments diverge in their results, showing no generalizable patterns linking habitat and dietary degradation with bacterial diversity. The challenge in drawing general conclusions from such studies lies in the broad terms describing diverse habitats (“wild”, “captive”, “pristine”). We conducted 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing to characterize intestinal microbiota of free-ranging sympatric chimpanzees and gorillas in southeastern Cameroon and sympatric chimpanzees and gorillas in a European zoo. We conducted participant-observation and semi-structured interviews among people living near these great apes to understand better their feeding habits and habitats. Unexpectedly, bacterial diversity (ASV, Faith PD and Shannon) was higher among zoo gorillas than among those in the Cameroonian forest, but zoo and Cameroonian chimpanzees showed no difference. Phylogeny was a strong driver of species-specific microbial composition. Surprisingly, zoo gorilla microbiota more closely resembled that of zoo chimpanzees than of Cameroonian gorillas. Zoo living conditions and dietary similarities may explain these results. We encourage multidisciplinary approach integrating environmental sampling and anthropological evaluation to characterize better diverse environmental conditions of such investigations.
Highlights
Comparisons of mammalian gut microbiota across different environmental conditions shed light on the diversity and composition of gut bacteriome and suggest consequences for human and animal health
Studies of nonhuman primates (NHPs) can offer rich insight for humans and other mammalian life: NHP health is essential for species and environmental conservation, and these primates display high diversity and adaptability across ecological niches, complex social organization, wide geographic distribution, and evolutionary proximity to human beings[15,16,17]
Four other NHP species in Uganda displayed no association between gut bacterial diversity and habitat degradation, that study did not use the same methods to categorize habitat degradation and to condition feces as other investigations[12]
Summary
Comparisons of mammalian gut microbiota across different environmental conditions shed light on the diversity and composition of gut bacteriome and suggest consequences for human and animal health. Broad-ranging influences, including host genetics, living conditions, diet, stress, and antibiotic use can affect gut microbial d iversity[2,3,4,5] Among these influences, diet and living conditions have been evaluated for human and animal populations, entailing significant effects on gut microbiota and consequences for human and animal health. Outside of laboratory conditions, disentangling the effects of living and dietary conditions on gut microbial composition from other influences remains a complex question In humans, such questions have catalyzed multiple studies comparing environmental and gut microbiota between “westernized” and “rural” p eoples[8,9,10]. Relatively few NHP microbiome studies have been conducted, and even fewer on great apes, whose genetic proximity, adaptability across multiple ecological zones and to changing alimentary regimens, and co-speciation of some gut bacteria render them a useful m odel[18,19,20]. Some analyses explicitly argue that reduced alpha diversity among captive NHP species suggests a similar pattern to that of “westernized (human) societies”[2]
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