Social networks predict gut microbiome composition in wild baboons
- Duke University, United States
- University of Montreal, Canada
- University of Minnesota, United States
- University of Notre Dame, United States
- National Museums of Kenya, Kenya
Abstract
Social relationships have profound effects on health in humans and other primates, but the mechanisms that explain this relationship are not well understood. Using shotgun metagenomic data from wild baboons, we found that social group membership and social network relationships predicted both the taxonomic structure of the gut microbiome and the structure of genes encoded by gut microbial species. Rates of interaction directly explained variation in the gut microbiome, even after controlling for diet, kinship, and shared environments. They therefore strongly implicate direct physical contact among social partners in the transmission of gut microbial species. We identified 51 socially structured taxa, which were significantly enriched for anaerobic and non-spore-forming lifestyles. Our results argue that social interactions are an important determinant of gut microbiome composition in natural animal populations-a relationship with important ramifications for understanding how social relationships influence health, as well as the evolution of group living.
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© 2015, Tung et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Social networks predict gut microbiome composition in wild baboons
eLife 4:e05224.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05224
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