Recent advances in the metagenomics of marine mammals microbiome

Abstract

In recent years, marine life has gotten highly popularized through research, education, and audio-visual programs especially in exploring marine mammals. Marine mammals are warm-blooded animals, evolved from three different terrestrial groups and adapted to marine environment; few of them spend their entire lifespan in the sea and few come out to sea shore at a particular stage. Further, they act as an indicator of environmental change and ocean health. Seawater and different biological niches provide the base to marine mammals for harboring a rich microbiome that plays a major role in host nutrition, tissue differentiation, health, disease, and immune responses. Microbiota has been observed to be species-specific, related to the evolutionary divergence and host phylogeny. Several researchers are pursuing studies to better understand the marine microbial association, as these megafauna are under threat due to hunting, habitat degradation, and infectious diseases. This expanding knowledge will help in developing strategies for marine mammal's health improvement and their conservation. In this book chapter, we emphasize the microbe-host association in marine mammals and recent metagenomic studies untapping the marine host-specific microbial diversity. It also portrays the unique evolutionary lineages of marine mammals and provides baseline information on normal as well as pathogenic microbiota.