Wolves, dogs and humans in regular contact can mutually impact each other\u2019s skin microbiota

Stefanie Urimare Wetzels,Cameron R Strachan,Evelyne Selberherr,Iwan Anton Burgener,Zsófia Virányi,Beate Conrady,Martin Wagner

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-96160-7

Abstract

In contrast to humans and dogs, the skin microbiota of wolves is yet to be described. Here, we investigated the skin microbiota of dogs and wolves kept in outdoor packs at the Wolf Science Center (WSC) via 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Skin swab samples were also collected from human care takers and their pet dogs. When comparing the three canine groups, representing different degrees of human contact to the care takers and each other, the pet dogs showed the highest level of diversity. Additionally, while human skin was dominated by a few abundant phylotypes, the skin microbiota of the care takers who had particularly close contact with the WSC animals was more similar to the microbiota of dogs and wolves compared to the humans who had less contact with these animals. Our results suggest that domestication may have an impact on the diversity of the skin microbiota, and that the canine skin microbiota can be shared with humans, depending on the level of interaction.

Highlights

In contrast to humans and dogs, the skin microbiota of wolves is yet to be described
Out of all four groups, species richness and diversity were lowest in human skin microbiota, whereas the pet dog group had the highest species richness and diversity
The low species richness and diversity in the human skin microbiota has been shown in previous studies[42,43] and might be driven by physiological differences of the skin between humans and canines, such as pH and hair covering, as well as by skin hygiene practices and differences in regular environmental contact[44,45]

Summary

Introduction

In contrast to humans and dogs, the skin microbiota of wolves is yet to be described. Since domestication from wild grey wolves began more than 30,000 years a go[4], domesticated dogs have undergone dramatic phenotypic and genotypic changes[5,6,7,8] that are linked to having switched to living close to humans and feeding on human waste Even though this new ecological niche of dogs has likely affected their microbiome as well, direct comparisons of the microbiota of domestic dogs and wolves (Canis lupus) remain at present s carce[9,10]. There are several additional factors known to affect the composition of the skin microbiota of humans, such as age[28,29], birth delivery mode30, sex[31,32], hygiene, geography[33,34,35] and urbanization[32,36] This is true for the canine skin microbiota c omposition[20,22]. Given that pet owners tend to establish especially close relationships and engage in the most diverse activities with their dogs, this closeness as well as the long evolutionary history of dog–human cohabitation may contribute to the successful establishment of exchanged microbes between dogs and humans

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