metagenome
The total DNA was extracted from dung samples of Asian elephants using the QIAamp DNA Stool Mini Kit (Qiagen, Germany) following the manufacturers instructions. The quality and integrity of the extracted DNA were verified by electrophoresis on a 1% agarose gel, and concentration and purity were assessed using a NanoDrop2000 spectrophotometry (Thermo Fisher Scientific, USA). High-quality DNA samples were utilized for constructing metagenomic libraries with the NEB Next Ultra II DNA Library Prep Kit for Illumina (New England Biolabs, USA). Qualified libraries were subjected to paired-end sequencing by Novogene (Beijing, China) on Illumina NovaSeq X plus platform.