Environmental filtering across seasons and host-associated selection shape the gut microbiome of sympatric European Sepsis dung flies

Abstract

Animal microbiomes are shaped by both environmental exposure and host-associated filtering, but the relative importance of these processes remains poorly understood. Dung-associated insects provide an ideal model because they develop and feed in highly dynamic microbial environments. We investigated the gut microbiomes of six sympatric dung fly species of the genus Sepsis (Diptera: Sepsidae) and compared them with microbial communities in cow dung throughout a growing season in Switzerland. Using full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing (PacBio), we characterized bacterial communities from 74 fly and 15 dung samples. Seasonal variation was the strongest predictor of microbiome composition, whereas host species exerted weaker effects that persisted after removing dung-associated taxa, indicating that gut communities are not merely passive reflections of environmental exposure. Only few gut microbiome reads were attributable to dung-associated taxa, and environmental overlap differed among fly species rather than season. A highly non-random core microbiome persisted across all six species: 36 bacterial genera (of 469) were shared by all hosts at [~]119-fold enrichment above random expectation and remained after removing dung-associated taxa. These findings support a two-layer model of microbiome assembly, in which seasonal environmental variation determines microbial availability while host-specific processes selectively retain a subset of taxa.