Half The Gut Microbes In Our Primate Ancestors Abandoned Us

There are all kinds of bacteria living in our gut, contributing to the healthy (or unhealthy) processes going on inside our bodies, but it turns out that we've lost a lot of the microbes that we once shared with our ancient primate ancestors.
Looking at genetic material in the guts of modern-day chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes and P. t. schweinfurthii) and bonobos (P. paniscus), researchers traced back the lineages of their gut bacteria millions of years, before comparing them with the microbes that now live in human beings and African apes (our closest evolutionary relatives).
The analysis showed that many types of primate gut bacteria have evolved over that time, including in humans, but that a significant number of the bacteria that have evolved (or "co-diversified") with their hosts have been lost in Homo sapiens.
"This is the first microbiome-wide study showing that there are a great number of ancestral co-diversifying bacteria that have been co-living within primates and humans for millions of years," says evolutionary biologist Andrew Moeller from Cornell University in New York.
Half The Gut Microbes In Our Primate Ancestors Abandoned Us