You Are More Than What You Eat: Differential Enrichment of Microbiome Functions Across Bat Dietary Niches

Animals evolved in a microbial world, and their gut microbial symbionts have played a role in their ecological diversification. While many recent studies have reported patterns of co-diversification of hosts and their gut microbes, few studies have directly examined the functional contributions of these microbes to the dietary habits of their hosts.Here, we examined functional enrichment of metabolic pathways in the gut bacteria of 545 bats belonging to 60 species and five terrestrial feeding niches.