Data from: Phylosymbiosis: relationships and functional effects of microbial communities across host evolutionary history

Phylosymbiosis was recently proposed to describe the eco-evolutionary
pattern whereby the ecological relatedness of host-associated microbial
communities parallels the phylogeny of related host species. Here, we
analyze the prevalence of phylosymbiosis and its functional significance
under highly controlled conditions by characterizing the microbiota of 24
animal species from four different groups (Peromyscus deer mice,
Drosophila flies, mosquitoes, Nasonia wasps) and re-evaluate the
phylosymbiotic relationships of seven species of wild hominids. We
demonstrate three key findings. First, intraspecific microbiota variation
is consistently less than interspecific microbiota variation, and
microbiota-based models predict host species origin with high accuracy
across the dataset. Interestingly, the age of host clade divergence
positively associates with the degree of intraspecific microbial community
distinguishability within the host clades, spanning recent host speciation
(~one million years ago) to more distantly related host genera (~108
million years ago). Second, various topological congruence analyses of
each group's phylogeny and microbiota dendrogram reveal significant
degrees of phylosymbiosis, irrespective of host clade age or taxonomy.
Third, experimental transplants of autochthonous (intraspecific) versus
allochthonous (interspecific) microbiota among closely related wasp
species and more divergent mice species demonstrate reductions in host
survival and digestive performance, respectively. Consistent with
selection on host-microbiota interactions driving phylosymbiosis, there
are survival and performance reductions when interspecific microbiota
transplants are conducted between closely-related and divergent host
species pairs. Overall these findings indicate that the composition and
functional effects of an animal's microbial community can be closely
allied with host evolution, even across wide-ranging timescales and in
diverse animal systems reared under controlled conditions.