Phylosymbiosis paper published in PNAS

In the culmination of a large sampling and characterization effort over the past several years and including many lab members, our paper (Weinstein et al. 2021) has recently come out in PNAS! Over 3 years of sampling efforts, Dearing lab members collected 7 Neotoma spp. from 25 populations, and collected both wild and captive fecal samples to characterize their microbiomes. In this study, we investigated the factors that structure the mammalian herbivore gut microbiome and found that host genetics is the strongest factor in structuring the gut microbial community, superseding geographic location and diet. Excitingly, a photo of Neotoma bryanti is featured on the cover of this journal issue. Read more about the paper here.


Citation:
Weinstein, S.B., Martínez-Mota, R., Stapleton, T.E., Klure, D.M., Greenhalgh, R., Orr, T.J., Dale, C., Kohl, K.D. and Dearing, M.D., 2021. Microbiome stability and structure is governed by host phylogeny over diet and geography in woodrats (Neotoma spp.). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(47).

Neotoma bryanti on juniper branches