ArticleNature communications2015
Baleen whales host a unique gut microbiome with similarities to both carnivores and herbivores.
Article in Nature communications, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 108 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
108 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 206 citations in OpenAlex.
- Dietary Utilization Drives the Differentiation of Gut Bacterial Communities between Specialist and Generalist Drosophilid Flies.Microbiology spectrum · 2022Pooled it
- Animal gut microbes and microbiomes in the 21st century and beyond.Science China. Life sciences · 2026Review
- Sex and social group altered the gut microbiome and fecal metabolome in the critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoise (Current zoology · 2026Article
- Functional traits shape gut microbial assembly beyond phylogeny in estuarine fish.Science China. Life sciences · 2026Article
- Fecal Material of Captive Wild Animals as Source of CAZymes With Application Potential.Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology · 2026Article
- Characterising the gut microbiomes of two baleen whales with different feeding and migratory strategies.Animal microbiome · 2026Article
- Metatranscriptomic analyses of gut bacterial and viral communities in the critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis) under distinct environments.Animal microbiome · 2026Article
- Impact of baleen whales on ocean primary production across space and time.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Vibrio spp.: a potential critical pathogen for mammals with implications beyond marine aquaculture.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- Genome-based reclassification ofInternational journal of systematic and evolutionary microbiology · 2025Article
- The Digestive Microbiome Diversity of the Least Killifish, Heterandria formosa, and Its Implications for Host Adaptability to Varying Trophic Levels.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Article
- Mucosal immune responses and intestinal microbiome associations in wild spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta).Communications biology · 2025Article
- Comparative metagenomics of tropical reef fishes show conserved core gut functions across hosts and diets with diet-related functional gene enrichments.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Dietary preferences affect the gut microbiota of three snake species (Squamata: Colubridae).Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Comparative metagenomics of tropical reef fishes show conserved core gut functions across hosts and diets with diet-related functional gene enrichments.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- The interplay between host-specificity and habitat-filtering influences sea cucumber microbiota across an environmental gradient of pollution.Environmental microbiome · 2024Article
- Taxonomic composition and functional potentials of gastrointestinal microbiota in 12 wild-stranded cetaceans.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
- Convergence of gut microbiota in myrmecophagous amphibians.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Metagenomics uncovers dietary adaptations for chitin digestion in the gut microbiota of convergent myrmecophagous mammals.mSystems · 2023Article
48 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Mammals host gut microbiomes of immense physiological consequence, but the determinants of diversity in these communities remain poorly understood. Diet appears to be the dominant factor, but host phylogeny also seems to be an important, if unpredictable, correlate. Here we show that baleen whales, which prey on animals (fish and crustaceans), harbor unique gut microbiomes with surprising parallels in functional capacity and higher level taxonomy to those of terrestrial herbivores. These similarities likely reflect a shared role for fermentative metabolisms despite a shift in primary carbon sources from plant-derived to animal-derived polysaccharides, such as chitin. In contrast, protein catabolism and essential amino acid synthesis pathways in baleen whale microbiomes more closely resemble those of terrestrial carnivores. Our results demonstrate that functional attributes of the microbiome can vary independently even given an animal-derived diet, illustrating how diet and evolutionary history combine to shape microbial diversity in the mammalian gut.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.