Microbiomes contribute to variation in many plant and animal traits, suggesting that microbiome-mediated traits could evolve through selection on the host. However, for such evolution to occur, microbiomes must exhibit sufficient heritability to contribute to host adaptation. Previous work has attempted to estimate the heritability of a variety of microbiome attributes. Here we show that most published estimates are limited to vertebrate and plant hosts, but significant heritability of microbiome attributes has been frequently reported. This indicates that microbiomes could evolve in response to host-level selection, but studies across a wider range of hosts are necessary before general conclusions can be made. We suggest future studies focus on standardizing heritability measurements for the purpose of meta-analyses and investigate the role of the environment in contributing to heritable microbiome variation. This could have important implications for the use of microbiomes in conservation, agriculture and medicine.

微生物组导致许多植物和动物性状的变异，这表明微生物组介导的性状可以通过在宿主上的选择而进化。然而，要发生这种进化，微生物组必须表现出足够的遗传性以促进宿主适应。以前的工作试图估计各种微生物组属性的遗传性。在这里，我们表明大多数已发表的估计值仅限于脊椎动物和植物宿主，但微生物组属性的显着遗传性经常被报道。这表明微生物组可以响应宿主水平的选择而进化，但在得出一般结论之前，有必要对更广泛的宿主进行研究。我们建议未来的研究侧重于标准化遗传力测量以进行荟萃分析，并调查环境在促进可遗传微生物组变异中的作用。这可能对微生物组在保护、农业和医学中的应用产生重要影响。