Effect of dietary macronutrients and immune challenge on gut microbiota, physiology, and feeding behavior in zebra finches

To increase our understanding of how dietary macronutrients affect physiology and gut microbiota and investigate whether feeding behavior is influenced by an immune threat, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, we determined if zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) exhibit shifts in physiology and gut microbiota when fed diets differing in macronutrient ratios. In our second experiment, we simulated an infection in birds using the bacterial endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and quantified feeding behavior in immune challenged and control individuals, as well as birds housed near either a control pair (no immune threat), or birds housed near a pair given an immune challenge with LPS (social cue of heightened infection risk). We also examined whether social cues of infection alter physiological responses relevant to responding to an immune threat, an effect that could be mediated through shifts in feeding behavior. This dataset describes the meta data for the manuscript. The sequences for the manuscript have been uploaded to GenBank (BioProject accession number: PRJNA1112869).