Dunwu Qi

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article Volume 16 - 2025 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2025.1698108 This article is part of the Research TopicUnravelling the Wildlife Gut Microbiome: The Crucial Role of Gut Microbiomes in Wildlife Conservation StrategiesView all 20 articles 1 Introduction Convergent evolution of diet represents a key evolutionary paradigm in which animals independently develop parallel adaptive traits to exploit similar ecological niches (Moeller et al., 2013; Delsuc et al., 2014).

Introduction The giant panda, as a flagship species for global biodiversity conservation, human activities during the last glacial period of the Quaternary period and the Holocene epoch have caused the giant panda population to collapse severely, leading to its endangered status (1). To date, with the establishment of nature reserves, both the population of wild giant pandas and the area of their habitats in China have shown significant growth (2).

Supporting Information Filename Description cobi14173-sup-0001-SuppMat.docx867.8 KB Appendix S1 Samples collected in this study and corresponding information. Appendix S2. Bar plot showing the panda gut microbiota assemblage at the phylum level. Appendix S3. Calinski–Harabasz (CH) index values indicating the optimal number of enterotype clusters. Appendix S4.