ArticleEvolution letters2023
Coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird.
Article in Evolution letters, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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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
13 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Coprophagy in Healthy Dogs Does Not Alter Fecal Core Microbiota or Increase Carriage of Enteropathogens.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Animal gut microbes and microbiomes in the 21st century and beyond.Science China. Life sciences · 2026Review
- Article
- The elephant (bird) in the room: unknown mechanisms and unresolved impacts of low DNA yields in avian microbiome research.Animal microbiome · 2026Article
- Behavioral Selection of Coprophagy in an Arid-Adapted Herbivore: Does a Compatibility-Risk Gradient Shape Selective Coprophagy?Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Faecal sac energy in common swifts (Apus apus) as a function of mass and nest identity.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Fecal microbiota and microbial community transplantation:Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Gut microbiota variation in captive tortoises is associated with host species, trophic category, and growth rate.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Nest Microbial Community Dynamics Within the Nest-Building Stage of Green-Backed Tits (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- The developmental changes of fecal microbial composition and diversity in emu (Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- The Influence of Microbiota on Wild Birds' Parental Coprophagy Behavior: Current Advances and Future Research Directions.Microorganisms · 2024Review
- Differences in Gut Microbes Across Age and Sex Linked to Metabolism and Microbial Stability in a Hibernating Mammal.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Chicory supplementation improves growth performance in juvenile ostriches potentially by attenuating enteritis.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Coprophagy is a behavior where animals consume feces, and has been observed across a wide range of species, including birds and mammals. The phenomenon is particularly prevalent in juveniles, but the reasons for this remain unclear. One hypothesis is that coprophagy enables offspring to acquire beneficial gut microbes that aid development. However, despite the potential importance of this behavior, studies investigating the effects in juveniles are rare. Here we experimentally test this idea by examining how ingestion of adult feces by ostrich chicks affects their gut microbiota development, growth, feeding behavior, pathogen abundance, and mortality. We conducted extensive longitudinal experiments for 8 weeks, repeated over 2 years. It involved 240 chicks, of which 128 were provided daily access to fresh fecal material from adults and 112 were simultaneously given a control treatment. Repeated measures, behavioral observations, and DNA metabarcoding of the microbial gut community, both prior to and over the course of the experiment, allowed us to evaluate multiple aspects of the behavior. The results show that coprophagy causes (a) marked shifts to the juvenile gut microbiota, including a major increase in diversity and rapid maturation of the microbial composition, (b) higher growth rates (fecal-supplemented chicks became 9.4% heavier at 8 weeks old), (c) changes to overall feeding behavior but no differences in feed intake, (d) lower abundance of a common gut pathogen (
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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.