Sex-specific bacterial microbiome variation in octopus vulgaris skin.

Growing knowledge of the host-microbiota of vertebrates has shown the prevalence of sex-specific differences in the microbiome. However, there are virtually no studies assessing sex-associated variation in the microbiome of cephalopods. Here we assess sex-specific variation in the common octopus () skin microbiome using amplicon sequencing targeting the V4 hypervariable region of prokaryote 16S rRNA genes.