Comparative study of gut microbiota reveals the adaptive strategies of gibbons living in suboptimal habitats.

Wild animals face numerous challenges in less ideal habitats, including the lack of food as well as changes in diet. Understanding how the gut microbiomes of wild animals adapt to changes in food resources within suboptimal habitats is critical for their survival. Therefore, we conducted a longitudinal sampling of three gibbon species living in high-quality (Nomascus hainanus) and suboptimal (Nomascus concolor and Hoolock tianxing) habitats to address the dynamics of gut microbiome assembly over one year. The three gibbon species exhibited significantly different gut microbial diversity and composition. N. hainanus showed the lowest alpha diversity and highest nestedness, suggesting a more specialized and potentially stable microbial community in terms of composition, while H. tianxing displayed high species turnover and low nestedness, reflecting a more dynamic microbial ecosystem, which may indicate greater sensitivity to environmental changes or a flexible response to habitat variability. The gut microbial community of N. concolor was influenced by homogeneous selection in the deterministic process, primarily driven by Prevotellaceae. In contrast, the gut microbial communities of H. tianxing and N. hainanus were influenced by dispersal limitation in the stochastic process, driven by Acholeplasmataceae and Fibrobacterota, respectively. Further, the microbial response patterns to leaf feeding in N. hainanus differed from those of the other two gibbon species. In conclusion, this first cross-species comparative study provides initial insights into the different ecological adaptive strategies of gut microbiomes from a point of community assembly, which could contribute to the long-term conservation of wild primates. In this study, we conducted longitudinal sampling of three gibbon species living in high-quality (Nomascus hainanus) and suboptimal (Nomascus concolor and Hoolock tianxing) habitats to address the dynamics of gut microbiome (composition, alpha diversity, beta diversity and assembly process) over one year.