| dc.description.abstract | Gut microbiomes, the genetic repertoire for millions to trillions of microbes residing throughout each metazoan’s digestive tract, are shaped by their host and environment. Composed of up to 500 times the genetic diversity of the human genome and distributed across more than 1,000 microbial species, microbiomes result from ecological assembly of microbial communities known as microbiota. The advent of high throughput genetic sequencing hastened the characterization of microbiota and microbiomes, revealing an under-appreciated diversity of microbial taxa, ecological compositions, and functional capabilities. It is within these gastrointestinal communities that this body of work aims to assess variation associating intrinsically with host physiology, genetics, metabolism, immunity, and evolutionary relatedness, as well as extrinsically with lifestyle, diet, environment, and sociality. Research presented here addresses a diverse set of hypotheses about how animal and human hosts shape their associated microbiomes. This breadth of topics reflects the newly appreciated importance of host-associated microbiomes, and exemplifies the many important questions that still need to be addressed in such a fledgling field. While disparate questions were addressed in each project, the results presented here reveal novel insights about how animals and humans shape their complex communities of associated microorganisms. | |
