STEFFEN FOERSTERSocial interactions play a leading role in determining the content of the chimpanzee microbiome, suggests a study published today (January 15) in Science Advances. The more chimpanzees interact with others in their group, the more uniform the group’s collective microbiome is, and the greater number of species each individual’s microbiome has.
Microbiologists have often assumed that animals and humans primarily acquire their microbiomes from their mothers, a phenomenon called vertical transmission. But “chimpanzees within a maternal line did not share more similar gut communities than unrelated socially interacting chimpanzees,” said paper coauthor Andrew Moeller, who studies the evolution of the vertebrate microbiome at the University of California, Berkeley.
“This paper provides exciting evidence that social contact has a stronger effect on the chimpanzee microbiome than vertical transmission,” Rob Knight of the University of California, San Diego, wrote in an email to The Scientist.
Moeller and his colleagues analyzed eight years of observations and stool samples from a group of chimpanzees living in Gombe, Tanzania. The purpose of studying the chimpanzees at Gombe has not historically been ...
