Data from: Metabarcoding of fecal pellets in wild muskox populations reveals negative relationships between microbiome and diet alpha diversity ...

• Main Author: Prewer, Erin
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2022
• Subjects: FOS: Biological sciences; muskox; Microbiome; metabarcoding; Diet; alpha diversity; beta diversity; Arctic; ovibos moschatus
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h9w0vt4n3; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.h9w0vt4n3

Microbiome diversity and diet composition concomitantly influence species health, fitness, immunity, and digestion. In environments where diet varies spatially and temporally, microbiome plasticity may promote rapid host adaptation to available resources. For northern ungulates in particular, metabarcoding of noninvasively collected fecal pellets presents unprecedented insights into their diverse ecological requirements and niches by clarifying the interrelationships of microbiomes, key to deriving nutrients, in context of altered forage availability in changing climates. Muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) are Arctic-adapted species that experience fluctuating qualities and quantities of vegetation. Geography and seasonality have been noted to influence microbiome composition and diversity in muskoxen, yet it is unclear how their microbiomes intersect with diet. Following observations from other species, we hypothesized increasing diet diversity would result in higher microbiome diversity in muskoxen. We assessed ... : DNA from fecal samples were extracted using the Qiagen Power Fecal DNA extraction kit. The Illumina 16S metagenomic library protocol was followed using ITS2, RBCL, and TRNL markers. ...