Gut microbiome-diet interactions in wild birds
Persistent URL
Author(s)
Uehling, Jennifer J.
Houtz, Jennifer L.
Date Issued
September 22, 2025
Abstract
Birds show global declines, and understanding the relationship between avian diet and fitness can both answer basic questions in physiological ecology and inform conservation efforts. Diet-induced changes to the gut microbiome, the collection of microorganisms and their functional genes and metabolites inside the gut, may be of particular importance to avian fitness as the gut microbiome provides a suite of beneficial roles for nutrition and immunity of the host. Furthermore, evidence is growing that the gut microbiome may impact animals' diet choices, which could have cascading impacts on avian fitness. Sequencing technologies allow both diet and gut microbial composition and diversity to be characterized from the same fecal sample, creating ripe opportunities to explore diet-microbiome relationships. In this mini-review we summarize the existing literature on the effect of diet category, diet shifts, and dietary diversity on the gut microbiome, and the potential for the gut microbiome to serve as a modulator of diet choice in wild birds. We list open questions in the field of avian diet-microbiome interactions and provide methodology considerations for designing studies to sample both diet and gut microbiomes. This mini-review provides a framework for understanding the reciprocal relationship between diet and gut microbiota in wild birds.
Journal
Journal of Avian Biology
Department
Biology
Citation
Uehling, J.J. and Houtz, J.L. (2025), Gut microbiome–diet interactions in wild birds. J Avian Biol, 2025: e03456. https://doi.org/10.1002/jav.03456
Publisher
Wiley
Version of Article
Published version
DOI
10.1002/jav.03456
ISSN
0908-8857
1600-048X
Rights
© 2025 The Author(s). Journal of Avian Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Nordic Society Oikos. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Type of Publication
Research Article
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