Changes in Social Environment Impact Primate Gut Microbiome Composition

Prior work in humans and free-ranging nonhuman primates has shown that cohabitation and frequent social interaction can lead to changes in GM composition. However, it is difficult to assess the direction of causation in these studies, and interpretations are complicated by the influence of uncontrolled but correlated factors, such as shared diet. We performed a 15-month longitudinal investigation wherein we disentangled the impacts of diet and social living conditions on GM composition in a captive cohort of 13 male cynomolgus macaques. Our findings decouple the influences that diet and social living have on GM composition and reconcile previous observations in the human and animal literatures. Moreover, the results indicate biological alterations of the gut that may, in part, mediate the relationship between sociality and wellbeing.