ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbial Symbioses
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1603500
This article is part of the Research TopicUnravelling the Wildlife Gut Microbiome: The Crucial Role of Gut Microbiomes in Wildlife Conservation StrategiesView all 9 articles
Skin, but not gut, microbial communities vary with social density in Antarctic fur seals
Provisionally accepted
Petroula Botsidou1,2*
Michael Schloter2,3
Öncü Maraci4
Silvia Gschwendtner2
Rebecca Nagel5
Jaume Forcada6
Joseph Ivan Hoffman1,6,7- 1Department of Evolutionary Population Genetics, Faculty of Biology, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
- 2Research Unit Comparative Microbiome Analysis, Helmholtz Munich, Neuherberg, Germany
- 3Chair for Environmental Microbiology, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Bavaria, Germany
- 4Department of Behavioural Ecology, Faculty of Biology, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
- 5Current address: Centre for Biological Diversity, School of Biology, Faculty of Science, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom
- 6British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Cambridge, United Kingdom
- 7Center for Biotechnology (CeBiTec), Faculty of Biology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
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Comparative studies of microbial communities occupying different body sites in wild vertebrates are scarce, but they are crucial for advancing our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary factors shaping animal microbiomes. We therefore used a "natural experiment" comprising motheroffspring pairs from two adjacent Antarctic fur seal breeding colonies that differ in social density to investigate differences between skin and gut microbial communities in relation to host-specific and environmental factors. Using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, we uncovered a strong influence of colony on the diversity and composition of skin but not gut microbial communities. Specifically, we observed a suppressive effect of high social density on skin microbial alpha diversity as well as an overabundance of phyla associated with diseases and bite wounds in the high-density colony. Our findings suggest that skin microbial communities may be more sensitive to external factors, whereas gut communities are more tightly regulated by the host. Overall, this study highlights the importance of considering multiple body sites and their distinct microbial communities to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the factors shaping microbial diversity and composition in marine mammals.
Keywords: Skin microbiome, gut microbiome, Social density, Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella), pinniped
Received: 01 Apr 2025; Accepted: 28 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Botsidou, Schloter, Maraci, Gschwendtner, Nagel, Forcada and Hoffman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Petroula Botsidou, Department of Evolutionary Population Genetics, Faculty of Biology, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, 33615, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
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