Animal Microbiome (Dec 2022)

Low microbiome diversity in threatened amphibians from two biodiversity hotspots

  • Sasha E. Greenspan,
  • Pedro Peloso,
  • Jesualdo A. Fuentes-González,
  • Molly Bletz,
  • Mariana L. Lyra,
  • Ibere F. Machado,
  • Renato A. Martins,
  • Daniel Medina,
  • Diego Moura-Campos,
  • Wesley J. Neely,
  • Jackson Preuss,
  • Marcelo J. Sturaro,
  • Renata I. Vaz,
  • Carlos A. Navas,
  • Luís Felipe Toledo,
  • Alexandro M. Tozetti,
  • Miguel Vences,
  • Douglas C. Woodhams,
  • Célio F. B. Haddad,
  • Jason Pienaar,
  • C. Guilherme Becker

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s42523-022-00220-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Abstract Microbial diversity positively influences community resilience of the host microbiome. However, extinction risk factors such as habitat specialization, narrow environmental tolerances, and exposure to anthropogenic disturbance may homogenize host-associated microbial communities critical for stress responses including disease defense. In a dataset containing 43 threatened and 90 non-threatened amphibian species across two biodiversity hotspots (Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and Madagascar), we found that threatened host species carried lower skin bacterial diversity, after accounting for key environmental and host factors. The consistency of our findings across continents suggests the broad scale at which low bacteriome diversity may compromise pathogen defenses in species already burdened with the threat of extinction.

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