Social structuring of the gut microbiome in communally roosting bats
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The gut microbiome is the community of microbes that inhabits the gastrointestinal tracts of animals. Laboratory findings have shown that the gut microbiome plays a crucial role in host metabolism, physiology, and immunity. This has led to speculation that selection acts on both host and microbiome-although identifying functionally essential coevolving microbes in wild animals remains challenging. A recent surge of studies in wild populations has identified phylogenetic, spatiotemporal, dietary, and social patterns in host-associated microbiomes. Here, we describe and assess the gut microbiomes of two sympatric bat species: big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) and little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus). Although these species share similar diets and environments throughout much of their North American ranges, we found they have distinct gut microbiomes. We find no evidence of a functional core microbiome among big brown bats and identify roost identity as a driver of microbiome composition, likely arising from social transmission among hosts through physical proximity. We conclude that both environmental and social factors drive microbiome composition in big brown bats and that repeated, extensive sampling is required to bring ecological reality to host-associated microbiome studies in wild populations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".