Laboratory Animals - June Issue - 252

Special Issue: Microbiota

The gut microbiota of wild rodents:
Challenges and opportunities

Laboratory Animals
2019, Vol. 53(3) 252-258
! The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0023677218787538
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Mark Viney

Abstract
The gut microbiota can have important, wide-ranging effects on its host. To date, laboratory animals, particularly mice, have been the major study system for microbiota research. It is now becoming increasingly
clear that laboratory animals often poorly model aspects of the biology of wild animals, and this concern
extends to the study of the gut microbiota. Here, the relatively few studies of the microbiota of wild rodents
are reviewed, including a critical assessment of how the gut microbiota differs between laboratory and wild
rodents. Finally, the many potential advantages and opportunities of wild-animal systems for research into
the gut microbiota are considered.
Keywords
microbiota, model, rodent
Date received: 27 March 2018; accepted: 15 June 2018

Introduction
It is now well established that the gut microbiota can
have profoundly important, systemic eﬀects on an animal's biology. Studies with laboratory animals have
been central to discovering many of the wider eﬀects
of the gut microbiota. But, equally, it is now becoming
apparent that artefacts of laboratory animal studies
may be bringing unhelpful complexity to the study of
the gut microbiota,e.g.1 and so may have sometimes
frustrated progress in this area.
The fundamental rationale for the use of laboratory
animals is that they are models, but 'model' can mean
diﬀerent things. A laboratory animal can be a general
model for a group of related species, for example,
laboratory mice being a general model for other mammals or vertebrates: this is model, sense 1. A laboratory
animal can also be a model for a speciﬁc second species, for example, laboratory mice being a model
for humans: model, sense 2. A third type of model is
where laboratory animals are models of wild animals:
model, sense 3. These three, non-mutually exclusive
types of model are therefore making both crossspecies comparisons and comparisons between animals
leading diﬀerent lifestyles (i.e. wild v. laboratory).
There are obviously many ways in which laboratory
animals diﬀer from wild animals: laboratory animals

are usually genetically homogenous, well-nourished
and free from infection and disease. This contrasts
with wild animals where members of a population
will be genetically heterogeneous, as well as having different nutritional, reproductive and infection states.
Many aspects of an animal's biology are impacted by
its environment and it is reasonable to anticipate that
the gut microbiota will be similarly aﬀected in this way.
Indeed, studies of laboratory animals have shown very
signiﬁcant diﬀerences in the microbiota of the same
mouse strain kept in diﬀerent research facilities, itself
testament to the eﬀect of environment on an animal's
microbiota.2
Here, I will review what is actually known about the
gut microbiota of wild rodents, how the microbiota of
wild and laboratory animals compares, and ask what
important opportunities are provided by studying the
gut microbiota in wild-rodent systems.

School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, UK
Corresponding author:
Mark Viney, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol,
Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TQ, UK.
Email: Mark.Viney@bristol.ac.uk

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