Deciphering the ecoevolutionary recipe of milk microbiomes

Sarah M Hird

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2023.09.004

Deciphering the ecoevolutionary recipe of milk microbiomes

Trends Ecol Evol. 2023 Nov;38(11):1019-1021. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2023.09.004. Epub 2023 Sep 12.

Author

Sarah M Hird¹

Affiliation

¹ Molecular and Cell Biology Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA; Institute for Systems Genomics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA. Electronic address: sarah.hird@uconn.edu.

PMID: 37704544
DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2023.09.004

Abstract

In a recent article, Keady et al. analyzed mammalian milk microbiomes across 47 species and found their assembly to be largely determined by stochastic (i.e., random) processes. In many ways, host-associated microbiomes are not random, but random events may have an underappreciated role in microbiome assembly, persistence, and ecology.