Abstract
Conservation biology requires accurate data on how human-induced threats
affect wildlife fitness and survival. Gut microbiota play a critical
role in health by influencing physiology, nutrition, immunology, and
behaviour. Advances in non-invasive sampling, particularly scat
microbiome analysis, offer scalable conservation solutions. This study
establishes a benchmark using basic machine learning algorithms (SVM,
Ranger, glmnet, and xgboost) to predict health outcomes in koalas from
non-invasive scat microbiome data. Scat samples from 125 koalas were
analysed using 16S PacBio HiFi sequencing. By incorporating a
phylogenetic approach and integrating additional metrics such as sex,
age, and stress metabolites, which can potentially be acquired
non-invasively, we achieved high accuracy in predicting key health
outcomes, including body condition score (BCS), disease status, survival
outcome, and weight. The algorithms achieved a minimum accuracy of 68%
and a maximum accuracy of 84%. By establishing this benchmark, we set
the stage for future research to utilize wildlife hospital
infrastructure for larger sample collection and advanced machine
learning, with the ultimate goal of developing a predictive health
diagnostics tool for wildlife.