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The gut bacteria of giraffes are determined not by the plants they eat but by the species they belong to, according to a study by researchers from Uppsala and Brown universities.
A team of experts from both institutions analysed the link between diet and gut flora in three giraffe species — the reticulated giraffe, the Masai giraffe and the northern giraffe, which live around the equator in Kenya.
By sequencing plant and bacterial DNA from faecal samples, they were able to investigate both the bacterial composition of the gut and which plants wild giraffes had eaten.
“Despite geographic proximity and close evolutionary relationships, the three giraffe species of Kenya exhibited strong differences in both diets and gut microbiomes,” the paper noted.
The researchers found that the microbiome was primarily determined by the species they belonged to, not by what they ate.
“We expected that giraffes with similar diets would also have similar microbiomes, but we found no such connection. Instead, we saw that giraffes seem to maintain species-specific microbiomes, even when individuals within the same species may eat completely different sets of plants. This suggests that the microbiome may have an evolutionary component that we do not yet fully understand,” a statement by Uppsala university quoted Elin Videvall, researcher at the institution and lead author of the study.
Geography also played a major role in what they ate. Giraffes of the same species consumed different types of food depending on where they lived.
As all three species are endangered, any knowledge of what they eat can be important information, especially when planning which areas are important to preserve to ensure access to nourishment, according to the researchers.
Diet-microbiome covariation across three giraffe species in a close-contact zone has been published in Global Ecology and Conservation.