The gut microbiota from an anthropological perspective
Our research combines the tools of nutrition, physiology, microbial ecology, and anthropology to answer critical questions in biological anthropology and organismal biology. We are interested in studying the dynamics between the gut microbiota and their hosts in the broad context of host ecology and evolution.
Specifically, we are focused on how the gut microbiota responds to shifts in host diet and physiology and the resulting impact on host nutrition and health. Such interactions are likely to affect host fitness and have important implications for host ecology and evolution.
Our work addresses these topics in both non-human primates and humans. We use non-human primates as models to study host-gut microbe interactions in selective environments and to determine whether the human gut microbiota has characteristics that are unique among primates. We also study how variation in modern human environments influences health via impacts on host-microbe dynamics.