Metabarcoding of fecal pellets in wild muskox populations reveals negative relationships between microbiome and diet alpha diversity

Microbiome diversity and diet composition concomitantly influence species health, fitness, immunity, and digestion. In environments where diet varies spatially and temporally, microbiome plasticity may promote rapid host adaptation to available resources. For northern ungulates in particular, metabarcoding of noninvasively collected fecal pellets presents unprecedented insights into their diverse ecological requirements and niches by clarifying the interrelationships of microbiomes, key to deriving nutrients, in context of altered forage availability in changing climates. Muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) are Arctic-adapted species that experience fluctuating qualities and quantities of vegetation. Geography and seasonality have been noted to influence microbiome composition and diversity in muskoxen, yet it is unclear how their microbiomes intersect with diet. Following observations from other species, we hypothesized increasing diet diversity would result in higher microbiome diversity in m..., DNA from fecal samples were extracted using the Qiagen Power Fecal DNA extraction kit. The Illumina 16S metagenomic library protocol was followed using ITS2, RBCL, and TRNL markers., Data includes raw fastq files for each sample. Each raw file includes reads from ITS2, RBCL and TRNL., # Muskox Diet Metabarcoding from Metabarcoding of fecal pellets in wild muskox populations reveals negative relationships between microbiome alpha diversity and diet.

---

In this study, we amplify three common plant markers, TRNL, RBCL, and ITS from fecal samples to assess the diet of wild muskoxen across much of their Canadian range. Sampling from across different ecozones and seasons was performed to better understand the spectrum of wild muskoxen diets and how diet is influenced by geography and seasonality. We then compared the diversity and composition of the diet to that of the microbiome to determine how vegetation in different landscapes contribute to bacterial variation in muskox gut microbiomes, in context of their high fibre diet. These data provide insight into the plasticity of microbiomes relative to vegetation availability, which in turn also allow for predictions of the long-term impact climate change and concomitant vegetation changes have on muskox viability.

## Des...