Stochastic processes govern gut bacterial community assembly in a Schistosoma mansoni-transmitting snail, Biomphalaria straminea.

Background: Studies have revealed extensive taxonomic classifications and patterns of gut microbial diversity in snails, with limited focus on community assembly processes. To better understand the balance between stochastic and deterministic processes in the snail gut microbial assembly and their associations with snail fitness, we used the freshwater snail Biomphalaria straminea as a model and analyzed the gut bacterial communities from 118 samples via high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene.

Results: This study reveals that Proteobacteria and Bacteroidota dominate the gut microbiota of B.