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Kyoto, Japan -- Humans everywhere may be able to eat bananas all year round, but wild animals must always eat "in-season". For them, seasonal shifts in food availability present a major challenge, especially in temperate regions like Japan with strong seasonal variation.

Japanese macaques reside further north and in a colder climate than any other non-human primate. They like to eat fruits and seeds, but when unavailable the monkeys must rely on low-quality foods such as leaves and bark. How animals like macaques adapt to such dietary shifts has long been a central question in ecology.

It is well known that the composition of the gut microbiome changes with diet and environment in many animals, so research has increasingly focused on how gut microbes help animals cope with seasonal dietary changes. But scientists still do not fully understand how these microbial changes affect digestive efficiency.

A study by the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo offers insights into how microbial life may have functioned during a critical phase in Earth's history, when oxygen was only beginning to accumulate in the atmosphere. By studying iron-rich hot springs in Japan that mirror the conditions of early, low-oxygen oceans, researchers discovered microbial communities sustained by iron metabolism, supported through a relationship with oxygen-producing photosynthetic microbes.