Diversity Scaling of Human Digestive Tract (DT) Microbiomes: The Intra-DT and Inter-individual Patterns

The human gut microbiome has been extensively studied, but its diversity scaling (changes or heterogeneities) along the digestive tract (DT) as well their inter-individual heterogeneities have not adequately addressed to best of our knowledge. Here we fill gap by applying diversity-area relationship (DAR), a recent extension classic species-area (SAR) in biogeography, reanalyzing dataset over 2000 16s-rRNA samples obtained from 10 DT sites 200 individuals. We sketched out biogeography “maps” for each cross-individual DAR analysis, and intra-DT distribution pattern cross-DT-site analysis. Regarding it was found that all invariant (constant) parameter—all possessing same change rate across individuals, most different potential diversities, which include portions may be absent locally present regionally. In case this study, site covers total respective individuals cohort. terms genus richness , an average individual hosts approximately 20% population-level (total bacterial population). contrast, community biodiversity percentages population exceed 90%. This suggests differences between microbiomes are predominantly composition species, rather than how abundances distributed ( i.e ., biodiversity). patterns, parameter z ) is larger—suggesting changes larger changes. higher heterogeneity bacteria diversity, suggested heterogeneity, should expected since reflects functional differentiations tract, while (z) difference On average, contains 21–36% whole DT, even taxon levels.