Closely-related bats may have completely different communities of microbes, according to a study which suggests that gut bacteria may not be as important for the flying furry mammals as it is for other animals.
Earlier studies have established that in several mammals, including humans, gut bacteria, help in digesting food and maintaining healthy immune systems, and researchers are still learning about the relationship between microbes and skin, gut, and oral health in other animals.
But a study, published in the journal mSystems, revealed that bats have fewer bacterial species living in their guts than in their mouths and on their skin -- suggesting that the flying rodents may not be as dependent on gut bacteria compared to other mammals.
The researchers, including those from Chicago's Field Museum in the US, took samples of bacteria from the skin, tongues, and guts of 497 bats from 31 different species in Kenya and Uganda, and compared the genetic code of the microbes.
They found that the kinds of bacteria living in the bats' guts varied from species to species without any apparent evolutionary pattern.
According to the researchers, this was strange since for most other mammals, they said, closely-related hosts share more similar microbiomes -- a pattern called phylosymbiosis.
"We conclude that the gut, oral, and skin microbiota of bats are shaped predominantly by ecological factors and do not exhibit the same degree of phylosymbiosis observed in other mammals," the researchers wrote in the study.
Holly Lutz, study co-author from the Field Museum, said there's essentially no relationship between the bat microbiome and bat evolutionary history
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