Published December 31, 2030 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Agta hunter-gatherer oral microbiomes are shaped by contact network structure

Creators

  • 1. Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica, Università di Palermo; Palermo, Italy. Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich; Zurich, Switzerland.
  • 2. Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich; Zurich, Switzerland. Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra); Barcelona, Spain.
  • 3. Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra & Barcelona Graduate School of Economics; Barcelona, Spain. Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics, University of Tromsø; Norway
  • 4. Department of Health and Genomics, Center for Advanced Research in Public Health, FISABIO Foundation; Valencia, Spain. CIBER Center for Epidemiology and Public Health; Madrid, Spain
  • 5. Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge; Cambridge, United Kingdom.
  • 6. Department of Anthropology, University College London; London, United Kingdom.
  • 7. Department of Genetics and Evolution, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • 8. Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich; Zurich, Switzerland.
  • 9. Lyceum of the Philippines University, Intramuros, Manila, Philippines.
  • 10. GOTHAM Lab, Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems, and Department of Condensed Matter Physics, University of Zaragoza; Zaragoza, Spain. Center for Computational Social Science (CCSS), Kobe University; Kobe, Japan.
  • 11. School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London; London, United Kingdom. Dipartimento di Fisica ed Astronomia, Università di Catania and INFN; Catania, Italy. Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSHV); Vienna, Austria.
  • 12. Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich; Zurich, Switzerland. epartment of Network and Data Science, Central European University; Vienna, Austria.
  • 13. Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra); Barcelona, Spain.
  • 14. Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich; Zurich, Switzerland. Department of Anthropology, University College London; London, United Kingdom.

Description

Here we investigate the effects of extensive sociality and mobility on the oral microbiome of 138 Agta hunter-gatherers from the Philippines. Our comparisons of microbiome composition showed that the Agta are more similar to Central African Bayaka hunter-gatherers than to neighbouring farmers. We also defined the Agta social microbiome as a set of 137 oral bacteria (only 7% of 1980 amplicon sequence variants) significantly influenced by social contact (quantified through wireless sensors of short-range interactions). We show that large interaction networks including strong links between close kin, spouses, and even unrelated friends, can significantly predict bacterial transmission networks across Agta camps. Finally, we show that more central individuals to social networks are also bacterial supersharers. We conclude that hunter-gatherer social microbiomes are predominantly pathogenic and were shaped by evolutionary tradeoffs between extensive sociality and disease spread.

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Journal article: 10.1017/ehs.2023.4 (DOI)