Probing the functional significance of wild animal microbiomes using omics data

Abstract

Host-associated microbiomes are thought to play a key role in host physiology and fitness, but this conclusion mainly derives from systems biased towards animal models and humans. While many studies on non-model and wild animals have characterised the taxonomic diversity of their microbiomes, few have investigated the functional potential of these microbial communities. Functional ‘omics’ approaches, such as metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metabolomics, represent promising techniques to probe the significance of host-associated microbiomes in the wild. In this review, we propose to (1) briefly define the main available functional omics tools along with their strengths and limitations, (2) summarise the key advances enabled by omics tools to understand microbiome function in human and animal models, (3) showcase examples of how these methods have already brought invaluable insights into wild host microbiomes and (4) provide guidelines on how to implement these tools to address outstanding questions in the field of wild animal microbiomes. To conclude, we suggest that, building on knowledge derived from cheaper, more traditional approaches (e.g. 16S metabarcoding and qPCR), functional omics tools represent a promising approach to test hypotheses regarding the ecological and evolutionary significance of the resident microbiota in wild animals. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.