Is there convergence of gut microbes in blood-feeding vertebrates?

摘要: Animal microbiomes play an important role in dietary adaptation, yet the extent to which microbiome changes exhibit parallel evolution is unclear. Of particular interest adaptation extreme diets, such as blood, poses special challenges its content of proteins and lack essential nutrients. In this study, we assessed taxonomic signatures (by 16S rRNA amplicon profiling) potential functional (inferred by Phylogenetic Investigation Communities Reconstruction Unobserved States (PICRUSt)) haematophagy birds bats. Our goal was test three alternative hypotheses: no convergence microbiomes, taxonomy function. We find a statistically significant effect terms microbial across blood-feeding bats birds, although small compared differences found between haematophagous non-haematophagous species within two host clades. also some evidence at predicted level, it possible that metagenomic data poor representation lineages adapted genome databases limit power approach. The results provide paradigm for exploring convergent replicated with independent contrasts different lineages. This article part theme issue 'Convergent genomics era: new insights directions'.