Humanization of wildlife gut microbiota in urban environments

  1. Brian A Dillard  Is a corresponding author
  2. Albert K Chung
  3. Alex R Gunderson
  4. Shane C Campbell-Staton
  5. Andrew H Moeller  Is a corresponding author
  1. Cornell University, United States
  2. Princeton University, United States
  3. Tulane University, United States

Abstract

Urbanization is rapidly altering Earth’s environments, demanding investigation of the impacts on resident wildlife. Here, we show that urban populations of coyotes (Canis latrans), crested anole lizards (Anolis cristatellus), and white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) acquire gut microbiota constituents found in humans, including gut bacterial lineages associated with urbanization in humans. Comparisons of urban and rural wildlife and human populations revealed significant convergence of gut microbiota among urban populations relative to rural populations. All bacterial lineages overrepresented in urban wildlife relative to rural wildlife and differentially abundant between urban and rural humans were also overrepresented in urban humans relative to rural humans. Remarkably, the bacterial lineage most overrepresented in urban anoles was a Bacteroides sequence variant that was also the most significantly overrepresented in urban human populations. These results indicate parallel effects of urbanization on human and wildlife gut microbiota and suggest spillover of bacteria from humans into wildlife in cities.

Data availability

Sequencing data have been deposited in Data Dryad at https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z353d

The following data sets were generated
The following previously published data sets were used

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Brian A Dillard

    Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, United States
    For correspondence
    bd429@cornell.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1845-2980
  2. Albert K Chung

    Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Alex R Gunderson

    Tulane University, Tulane, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Shane C Campbell-Staton

    Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Andrew H Moeller

    Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, United States
    For correspondence
    ahm226@cornell.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8377-4647

Funding

National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R35 GM138284)

  • Andrew H Moeller

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2022, Dillard 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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  1. Brian A Dillard
  2. Albert K Chung
  3. Alex R Gunderson
  4. Shane C Campbell-Staton
  5. Andrew H Moeller
(2022)
Humanization of wildlife gut microbiota in urban environments
eLife 11:e76381.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.76381

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.76381

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