Meeting Abstract
We compare 250 bacterial and eukaryotic hind-gut microbiome samples taken from a community of thirty two lizard and snake species in the Chihuahuan desert. We assess the transmission of microbial lineages between hosts, and ask whether microbial lineages are more likely to be shared by hosts that are related phylogenetically. We compare the number of nearest-neighbor lineages shared within as opposed to between host species. If host genome constrains microbiome assembly, we expect to find a greater number of nearest-neighbor microbial lineage connections between conspecific, then congeneric hosts compared to confamilial or more distantly related hosts. As a null hypothesis, we permute microbial lineages across hosts, to determine whether more nearest neighbor links occur between congenerics than would be expected by chance. We test whether diet category influences microbiome by comparing strict insectivores with hosts that prey on vertebrates.
