Abstract
Anthropophilic species (“commensal” species) that are completely dependent upon anthropic habitats experience different selective pressures particularly in terms of food than their noncommensal counterparts. Using a next‐generation sequencing approach, we characterized and compared the gut microflora community of 53 commensal Rattus rattus and 59 noncommensal Rattus satarae captured in 10 locations in the Western Ghats, India. We observed that, while species identity was important in characterizing the microflora communities of the two Rattus hosts, environmental factors also had a significant effect. While there was significant geographic variation in the microflora of the noncommensal R. satarae, there was no effect of geographic distance on gut microflora of the commensal R. rattus. Interestingly, host genetic distance did not significantly influence the community in either Rattus hosts. Collectively, these results indicate that a shift in habitat is likely to result in a change in the gut microflora community and imply that the gut microflora is a complex trait, influenced by various parameters in different habitats.
Highlights
The burgeoning field of metagenomics has revealed the importance of bacterial symbionts in the health of vertebrate hosts, leading some authors to suggest that the symbionts may be called “a forgotten organ” of the host (O’Hara & Shanahan, 2006)
In order to assess the effect of host genetic distance, we focused on a subset of seven locations (AN, AG, BG, OT, KT, TH, and KD, Figure 1, Table 1) that were genetically characterized in an earlier study (Varudkar & Ramakrishnan, 2015)
We examined the gut microflora of two Rattus species that occupy different habitats: namely the commensal R. rattus and the noncommensal R. satarae
Summary
The burgeoning field of metagenomics has revealed the importance of bacterial symbionts in the health of vertebrate hosts, leading some authors to suggest that the symbionts may be called “a forgotten organ” of the host (O’Hara & Shanahan, 2006). Intrinsic factors such as host genetics (Linnenbrink et al, 2013), host phylogeography (Banks, Cary, & Hogg, 2009), and presence or absence of other enteric parasites (e.g., helminths, Kreisinger, Bastien, Hauffe, Marchesi, & Perkins, 2015) influence the diversity of gut microflora at different spatial and temporal scales. One of the most important factors that attract these species to an anthropic habitat is the overabundance of anthropogenic food (O’Connor, 2013) Such a change in diet type from natural to anthropogenic has been shown to have diverse impacts on the morphology, behavior, as well as physiology of the commensal species (Bateman & Fleming, 2012; Beckmann & Berger, 2003; Riyahi et al, 2013; Yom-Tov, Yom-Tov, & Baagøe, 2003).
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