Urbanization is associated with shifts in human lifestyles, thus possibly influencing the diversity, interaction and assembly of gut microbiota. However, the question regarding how human gut microbiota adapts to varying lifestyles remains elusive. To understand the relationship between gut microbiota and urbanization, we compared the diversity, interaction and assembly of gut microbial communities of herdsmen from three regions with different levels of urbanization, namely traditional herdsmen (TH), semi-urban herdsmen (SUH) and urban herdsmen (UH). The relative abundance of Prevotella decreased with the degree of urbanization (from TH to UH), whereas that of Bacteroides, Faecalibacterium, and Blautia showed an opposite trend. Although the alpha diversity measures (observed OTUs and phylogenetic diversity) of gut microbiota were unaffected by urbanization, the beta diversity (Jaccard or Bray-Curtis distances) was significantly influenced by urbanization. Metagenome prediction revealed that the gene functions associated with metabolism (i.e., carbohydrate and lipid metabolism) had significant differences between TH and UH. Network analysis showed that the modularity increased with the degree of urbanization, indicating a high extent of niche differentiation in UH. Meanwhile the trend of network density was opposite, indicating a more complex network in TH. Notably, the relative importance of environmental filtering that governed the community assembly increased with the degree of urbanization, which indicated that deterministic factors (e.g., low-fiber diet) play more important roles than stochastic factors (e.g., stochastic dispersal) in shaping the gut microbiota. A quantification of ecological processes showed a stronger signal of variable selection in UH than TH, implying that different selective pressures cause divergent gut community compositions due to urban lifestyles. Our results suggest that beta diversity, network interactions and ecological processes of gut microbiota may reflect the degree of urbanization, and highlight the adaptation of human gut microbiota to lifestyle changes.

Department of Applied Biology College of Biotechnology and Bioengineering Zhejiang University of Technology Hangzhou China

Institute of Occupational Health and Environmental Health School of Public Health Lanzhou University Lanzhou China

Institute of Soil Biology Czech Academy of Sciences České Budějovice Czechia

Key Laboratory of Adaptation and Evolution of Plateau Biota Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology Chinese Academy of Sciences Xining China

Key Laboratory of Environmental and Applied Microbiology Environmental Microbiology Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province Chengdu Institute of Biology Chinese Academy of Sciences Chengdu China

Qinghai Provincial Key Laboratory of Restoration Ecology in Cold Region Xining China

The Rowland Institute at Harvard Harvard University Cambridge MA United States

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