ArticleNature ecology & evolution2024
Social and environmental transmission spread different sets of gut microbes in wild mice.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed.
- Age-related changes in the gut microbiota of a long-lived seabird suggest divergence from mammalian models.Royal Society open science · 2026Article
- Farming practices exert selection pressures on the resistome of natural populations of house mice.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Social organization and habitat use shape the gut microbiome of a marine fish.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- The island biology of the host microbiome.Trends in microbiology · 2026Review
- Towards Key Principles of Host-Associated Microbiome Assembly.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- The gut microbiome shapes social behaviour across animal species.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Environmental fluctuations alter the competitive trade-offs of group size in a social primate.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Interspecies interaction controlsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Microbial transmission among giant panda, sympatric wildlife, and domesticated animals.iScience · 2026Article
- Social Structure and Interactions Differentially Shape Aerotolerant and Anaerobic Gut Microbiomes in a Cooperative Breeding Species.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Burden of rodent-borne viruses in rodents and zoonotic risk in humans in Cambodia.Microbiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Metagenomic analysis of fecal and environmental microbiota in rural mixed livestock farming systems in South Africa.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Article
- Differential Assembly of Core and Non-Core Host-Microbe Network Structures Along a Land-Use Change Gradient.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Indirect Environmental Effects on the Gut-Brain Axis in a Wild Mammal.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Evolution of gut microbiota across honeybee species revealed by comparative metagenomics.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Human microbiome acquisition and transmission.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2025Review
- Social Microbial Transmission in a Solitary Mammal.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- A phylogenetic approach to comparative genomics.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2025Review
- Host-Microbiome Associations of Native and Invasive Small Mammals Across a Tropical Urban-Rural Ecotone.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Wild house mice have a more dynamic and aerotolerant gut microbiota than laboratory mice.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Gut microbes shape many aspects of organismal biology, yet how these key bacteria transmit among hosts in natural populations remains poorly understood. Recent work in mammals has emphasized either transmission through social contacts or indirect transmission through environmental contact, but the relative importance of different routes has not been directly assessed. Here we used a novel radio-frequency identification-based tracking system to collect long-term high-resolution data on social relationships, space use and microhabitat in a wild population of mice (Apodemus sylvaticus), while regularly characterizing their gut microbiota with 16S ribosomal RNA profiling. Through probabilistic modelling of the resulting data, we identify positive and statistically distinct signals of social and environmental transmission, captured by social networks and overlap in home ranges, respectively. Strikingly, microorganisms with distinct biological attributes drove these different transmission signals. While the social network effect on microbiota was driven by anaerobic bacteria, the effect of shared space was most influenced by aerotolerant spore-forming bacteria. These findings support the prediction that social contact is important for the transfer of microorganisms with low oxygen tolerance, while those that can tolerate oxygen or form spores may be able to transmit indirectly through the environment. Overall, these results suggest social and environmental transmission routes can spread biologically distinct members of the mammalian gut microbiota.
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