Phylosymbiosis of Rodent in the Great Rift Valley Raw sequence reads
Host phylogeny and the environment play vital roles in shaping animal microbiomes. However, the effects of these variables on the diversity and richness of the gut microbiome in different bioclimatic zones remain underexplored. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of host phylogeny and bioclimatic zone on the diversity and composition of the gut microbiota of two heterospecific rodent species, Acomys cahirinus and the house mouse Mus musculus, in three bioclimatic zones of the African Great Rift Valley (GRV). We confirmed the host phylogeny using the D-loop sequencing method and analyzed the core microbiome and the influence of host phylogeny and bioclimatic zone parameters on the microbiome of the rodent gut using high-throughput amplicon sequencing of 16S rRNA gene fragments. We found that compared to the differences between species, the bioclimatic zone had a considerably greater effect on the gut microbiota composition. Sequencing was performed at the Joint Microbiome Facility of the Medical University of Vienna and the University of Vienna under the project ID JMF-2106-01.