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Dog evolution has long been debated, particularly with regards to the origin of domestication and its effects on the genome, but little is known about the role of the gut microbiome during the recent canine evolutionary history. We sequenced the metagenome of 13 canine coprolites dated ca. 3,600-3,450 y ago from the Bronze Age archaeological site of Solarolo (Italy), which housed a complex farming community. The microbiome structure of Solarolo dogs revealed continuity with that of modern dogs, but it also shared some features with the wild wolf microbiome, as a kind of transitional state between them. The dietary niche, as also inferred from the microbiome composition, was omnivorous, with evidence of consumption of starchy agricultural foods. Interestingly, the microbiome from Solarolo dogs was particularly enriched in sequences encoding alpha-amylases and complemented a low copy number of the host amylase (AMY2B) gene. These findings suggest that Neolithic dogs could have responded to the transition to a starch-rich diet by expanding microbial functionalities devoted to starch catabolism. Such a microbiome adaptive mechanism would have compensated for delayed host response to the new primarily abundant plant food resources, available from companionship with Bronze Age agriculturalists.

During times of rapid environmental change, survival of most vertebrate populations depends on their phenomic plasticity. Although differential gene-expression and post-transcriptional processes of the host genome receive focus as the main molecular mechanisms, growing evidence points to the gut microbiota as a key driver defining hosts' phenotypes. We propose that the plasticity of the gut microbiota might be an essential factor determining phenomic plasticity of vertebrates, and that it might play a pivotal role when vertebrates acclimate and adapt to fast environmental variation. We contemplate some key questions and suggest methodological approaches and experimental designs that can be used to evaluate whether gut microorganisms provide a boost of plasticity to vertebrates' phenomes, thereby increasing their acclimation and adaptation capacity.

Conservation efforts for endangered animals commonly focus on the protection of foraging habitats, aiming to ensure sufficient food availability. However, the diet of many species is based on animals that undergo habitat shifts across ontogenetic life stages, yielding considerable differences between the lifelong habitat requirements of both predator and prey. Consequently, prey availability may not only depend on the suitability of the foraging grounds where predator and prey coincide, but also on habitats where the ecological requirements of the non-prey stages are fulfilled. In this study we test to what extent prey of the insectivorous bat Rhinolophus euryale (Blasius 1853) originate either from the grounds where they are consumed, or in areas/habitats outside the bat's foraging sites. We analyzed the diet of R. euryale , by identifying its prey to the species level using DNA metabarcoding, and by searching for its prey's larval feeding requirements in the literature. We found that the larvae of the moth prey grow both inside and outside the grounds where they are hunted by the bats once the moths reach their adult stage. The importance of prey that originated from outside the bat's foraging grounds varied considerably across seasons. As a result, R. euryale does not only rely on the landscape elements where it hunts, but also on other source areas/habitats that supply it with food. This study shows that conservation measures that aim to address the foraging requirements of predatory species should not be limited to merely protecting their foraging grounds, but should also take into account the ecological requirements of their prey throughout their life stages.