Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31911491›Full record

ArticlemBio2020

Comparative Analyses of Vertebrate Gut Microbiomes Reveal Convergence between Birds and Bats.

Se Jin Song, Jon G Sanders, Frédéric Delsuc, Jessica Metcalf, Katherine Amato, Michael W Taylor, Florent Mazel, Holly L Lutz, Kevin Winker, Gary R Graves and 16 more

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in mBio, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 205 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
205citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

205 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Review
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Gut microbiota promote early-life digestive function in songbirds.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026
    Article
  8. Review
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Review
  19. Functional potential of gut microbiota inFrontiers in microbiology · 2026
    Article
  20. Review

145 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

26 authors.

Se Jin Song *Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA sjsong@ucsd.edu valerie.mckenzie@colorado.edu robknight@ucsd.edu.ORCID 0000-0003-0750-5709
Jon G Sanders *Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-6077-4014
Frédéric DelsucInstitut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier (ISEM), CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France.
Jessica MetcalfDepartment of Animal Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
Katherine AmatoDepartment of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA.
Michael W TaylorSchool of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Florent MazelDepartment of Botany, Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.ORCID 0000-0003-0572-9901
Holly L LutzDepartment of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-6454-809X
Kevin WinkerUniversity of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.
Gary R GravesDepartment of Vertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA.
Gregory HumphreyDepartment of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
Jack A GilbertDepartment of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
Shannon J HackettIntegrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Kevin P WhiteInstitute for Genomics and Systems Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Heather R SkeenIntegrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Sarah M KurtisDepartment of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
Jack WithrowUniversity of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.
Thomas BraileUniversity of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.
Matthew MillerUniversity of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.
Kevin G McCrackenUniversity of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.
James M MaleyMoore Laboratory of Zoology, Occidental College, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Vanessa O EzenwaOdum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
Allison WilliamsOdum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
Jessica M BlantonMarine Biology Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
Valerie J McKenzie *Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA sjsong@ucsd.edu valerie.mckenzie@colorado.edu robknight@ucsd.edu.
Rob Knight *Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA sjsong@ucsd.edu valerie.mckenzie@colorado.edu robknight@ucsd.edu.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Diet and host phylogeny drive the taxonomic and functional contents of the gut microbiome in mammals, yet it is unknown whether these patterns hold across all vertebrate lineages. Here, we assessed gut microbiomes from ∼900 vertebrate species, including 315 mammals and 491 birds, assessing contributions of diet, phylogeny, and physiology to structuring gut microbiomes. In most nonflying mammals, strong correlations exist between microbial community similarity, host diet, and host phylogenetic distance up to the host order level. In birds, by contrast, gut microbiomes are only very weakly correlated to diet or host phylogeny. Furthermore, while most microbes resident in mammalian guts are present in only a restricted taxonomic range of hosts, most microbes recovered from birds show little evidence of host specificity. Notably, among the mammals, bats host especially bird-like gut microbiomes, with little evidence for correlation to host diet or phylogeny. This suggests that host-gut microbiome phylosymbiosis depends on factors convergently absent in birds and bats, potentially associated with physiological adaptations to flight. Our findings expose major variations in the behavior of these important symbioses in endothermic vertebrates and may signal fundamental evolutionary shifts in the cost/benefit framework of the gut microbiome.

Indexed as

Biological EvolutionBirdsChiropteraGastrointestinal MicrobiomeVertebratesAnimalsComputational BiologyMetagenomeMetagenomicsdietevolutionflightmicrobiomevertebrate

Identifiers

PMID31911491
PMCPMC6946802

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

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.