ArticleThe ISME journal2019
Global change-driven use of onshore habitat impacts polar bear faecal microbiota.
Article in The ISME journal, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- Characterising the gut microbiome of six Australian marsupials reveals captivity constrains microbiome.Animal microbiome · 2026Article
- Host-Microbiome Interactions as Moderators of Host Quality and Biodiversity-Disease Relationships.Integrative and comparative biology · 2025Review
- Review
- Stomach Microbiome Simplification of a Coral Reef Fish at Its Novel Cold-Range Edge Under Climate Change.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Linking Gut Microbiota and Stereotypic Behavior of Endangered Species Under Ex Situ Conservation: First Evidence from Sun Bears.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Convergent gut microbial functional strategies drive energy metabolism adaptation across Ursidae species and challenge the uniqueness of giant panda.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Spatiotemporal differences induced changes in the structure and function of the gut microbiota in an endangered ungulate.Animal microbiome · 2024Article
- Global meta-analysis reveals the drivers of gut microbiome variation across vertebrates.iMetaOmics · 2024Article
- Contaminant Biomagnification in Polar Bears: Interindividual Differences, Dietary Intake Rate, and the Gut Microbiome.Environmental science & technology · 2024Article
- Gut microbiota variations in wild yellow baboons (Papio cynocephalus) are associated with sex and habitat disturbance.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Article
- Gut microbiome in two high-altitude bird populations showed heterogeneity in sex and life stage.FEMS microbes · 2024Article
- A Review of Circumpolar Arctic Marine Mammal Health-A Call to Action in a Time of Rapid Environmental Change.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Anthropogenic Neighborhood Impact on Bacterial and Fungal Communities in Polar Bear Feces.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Mock community as an in situ positive control for amplicon sequencing of microbiotas from the same ecosystem.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Taxonomic, Genomic, and Functional Variation in the Gut Microbiomes of Wild Spotted Hyenas Across 2 Decades of Study.mSystems · 2023Article
- Serum Virome of Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears (Conservation physiology · 2023Article
- Gut microbiota of ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) vary across natural and captive populations and correlate with environmental microbiota.Animal microbiome · 2022Article
- Distinct gut microbiomes in two polar bear subpopulations inhabiting different sea ice ecoregions.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Survival and abundance of polar bears in Alaska's Beaufort Sea, 2001-2016.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The gut microbiota plays a critical role in host health, yet remains poorly studied in wild species. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus), key indicators of Arctic ecosystem health and environmental change, are currently affected by rapid shifts in habitat that may alter gut homeostasis. Declining sea ice has led to a divide in the southern Beaufort Sea polar bear subpopulation such that an increasing proportion of individuals now inhabit onshore coastal regions during the open-water period ('onshore bears') while others continue to exhibit their typical behaviour of remaining on the ice ('offshore bears'). We propose that bears that have altered their habitat selection in response to climate change will exhibit a distinct gut microbiota diversity and composition, which may ultimately have important consequences for their health. Here, we perform the first assessment of abundance and diversity in the faecal microbiota of wild polar bears using 16S rRNA Illumina technology. We find that bacterial diversity is significantly higher in onshore bears compared to offshore bears. The most enriched OTU abundance in onshore bears belonged to the phylum Proteobacteria, while the most depleted OTU abundance within onshore bears was seen in the phylum Firmicutes. We conclude that climate-driven changes in polar bear land use are associated with distinct microbial communities. In doing so, we present the first case of global change mediated alterations in the gut microbiota of a free-roaming wild animal.
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Registered trials
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.