Dataset Information

Effects of Sex and Diet on Gut Microbiota of Farmland-Dependent Wintering Birds.

ABSTRACT: Gut microbiota plays an important role for bird biological and ecological properties, and sex and diet may be important intrinsic and extrinsic factors influencing gut microbial communities. However, sex difference of gut microbiota has been rarely investigated in free-living birds, and it remains unclear how sex and diet interactively affect avian gut microbiota composition and diversity, particularly under natural conditions. Here we used non-invasive molecular sexing technique to sex the fecal samples collected from two wintering sites of Great Bustard, which is the most sexually dimorphic among birds, as well as a typical farmland-dependent wintering bird. High-throughput sequencing of 16S was applied to identify the gut microbiota communities for both sexes under two diets (wheat_corn and rice_peanut). The results showed that 9.74% of common microbiota taxa was shared among four groups (sex vs. diet), revealing the conservatism of gut microbiota. Microbiota diversity, composition and abundance varied on different diets for male and female Great Bustards, suggesting that the gut microbiota was interactively influenced by both sex and diet. Under the wheat_corn diet, females had higher abundances of the phylum Verrucomicrobia than males, but lower Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes compared to males; meanwhile, the microbiota diversity and evenness were higher for males than females. In contrast, under the rice_peanut diet, females were more colonized by the phylum Firmicutes than males, but less by the phylum Bacteroidetes; while males had lower microbiota diversity and evenness than females. This study investigated the impacts of sex and diet on microbiota of Great Bustards, and highlights the need of new studies, perhaps with the same methodology, taking into account bird ages, flock size, breeding or health status, which will contribute to the understanding of ecology and conservation of this vulnerable species.

SUBMITTER: Liu G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7688461 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Effects of Sex and Diet on Gut Microbiota of Farmland-Dependent Wintering Birds.

Liu Gang G Meng Derong D Gong Minghao M Li Huixin H Wen Wanyu W Wang Yuhang Y Zhou Jingying J

Frontiers in microbiology 20201112

Gut microbiota plays an important role for bird biological and ecological properties, and sex and diet may be important intrinsic and extrinsic factors influencing gut microbial communities. However, sex difference of gut microbiota has been rarely investigated in free-living birds, and it remains unclear how sex and diet interactively affect avian gut microbiota composition and diversity, particularly under natural conditions. Here we used non-invasive molecular sexing technique to sex the feca ...[more]

PMID: 33262746

Similar Datasets

Project description:Children are prescribed second-generation antipsychotic (SGA) medications, such as olanzapine (OLZ) for FDA-approved and "off-label" indications. The long-term impact of early-life SGA medication exposure is unclear. Olanzapine and other SGA medications are known to cause excessive weight gain in young and adult patients, suggesting the possibility of long-term complications associated with the use of these drugs, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Further, the weight gain effects of OLZ have previously been shown to depend on the presence of gut bacteria and treatment with OLZ, which shifts gut bacteria toward an "obesogenic" profile. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate changes in gut bacteria in adult mice following early life treatment with OLZ and being fed either a high-fat diet or a high-fat diet supplemented with fish oil, which has previously been shown to counteract gut dysbiosis, weight gain, and inflammation produced by a high-fat diet. Female and male C57Bl/6J mice were fed a high fat diet without (HF) or with the supplementation of fish oil (HF-FO) and treated with OLZ from postnatal day (PND) 37-65 resulting in four groups of mice: mice fed a HF diet and treated with OLZ (HF-OLZ), mice fed a HF diet and treated with vehicle (HF), mice fed a HF-FO diet and treated with OLZ (HF-FO-OLZ), and mice fed a HF-FO diet and treated with vehicle (HF-FO). Following euthanasia at approximately 164 days of age, we determined changes in gut bacteria populations and serum LPS binding protein, an established marker of gut inflammation and dysbiosis. Our results showed that male HF-FO and HF-FO-OLZ mice had lower body weights, at sacrifice, compared to the HF group, with a comparable body weight across groups in female mice. HF-FO and HF-FO-OLZ male groups also exhibited lower serum LPS binding protein levels compared to the HF group, with no differences across groups in female mice. Gut microbiota profiles were also different among the four groups; the Bacteroidetes-to-Firmicutes (B/F) ratio had the lowest value of 0.51 in the HF group compared to 0.6 in HF-OLZ, 0.9 in HF-FO, and 1.1 in HF-FO-OLZ, with no differences in female mice. In conclusion, FO reduced dietary obesity and its associated inflammation and increased the B/F ratio in male mice but did not benefit the female mice. Although the weight lowering effects of OLZ were unexpected, FO effects persisted in the presence of olanzapine, demonstrating its potential protective effects in male subjects using antipsychotic drugs.

Project description:Environmental cadmium, with a high average dietary intake, is a severe public health risk. However, the long-term health implications of environmental exposure to cadmium in different life stages remain unclear.We investigated the effects of early exposure to cadmium, at an environmentally relevant dosage, on adult metabolism and the mechanism of action.We established mouse models with low-dose cadmium (LDC) exposure in early life to examine the long-term metabolic consequences. Intestinal flora measurement by 16S rDNA sequencing, microbial ecological analyses, and fecal microbiota transplant was conducted to explore the potential underlying mechanisms.Early LDC exposure (100 nM) led to fat accumulation in adult male mice. Hepatic genes profiling revealed that fatty acid and lipid metabolic processes were elevated. Gut microbiota were perturbed by LDC to cause diversity reduction and compositional alteration. Time-series studies indicated that the gut flora at early-life stages, especially at 8 weeks, were vulnerable to LDC and that an alteration during this period could contribute to the adult adiposity, even if the microbiota recovered later. The importance of intestinal bacteria in LDC-induced fat accumulation was further confirmed through microbiota transplantation and removal experiments. Moreover, the metabolic effects of LDC were observed only in male, but not female, mice.An environmental dose of cadmium at early stages of life causes gut microbiota alterations, accelerates hepatic lipid metabolism, and leads to life-long metabolic consequences in a sex-dependent manner. These findings provide a better understanding of the health risk of cadmium in the environment. Citation: Ba Q, Li M, Chen P, Huang C, Duan X, Lu L, Li J, Chu R, Xie D, Song H, Wu Y, Ying H, Jia X, Wang H. 2017. Sex-dependent effects of cadmium exposure in early life on gut microbiota and fat accumulation in mice. Environ Health Perspect 125:437-446;?http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/EHP360.

Project description:BackgroundWhile goose populations worldwide benefit from food provided by farmland, China's threatened wintering goose populations have failed to capitalize on farmland. It has been proposed that, due to an exceptionally intense human pressure on Chinese farmland, geese cannot exploit farmland in their wintering sites and hence are confined to their deteriorating natural habitat. If this were true, locally decreasing this human pressure on farmland 'refuges' would represent a promising conservation measure.MethodsWe investigate habitat use of two declining migratory goose species in their core wintering (Yangtze River Floodplain) and stopover (Northeast China Plain) regions, compare the human pressure level at both regions, and adopt a mixed-effect resource selection function model to test how human pressure, food resource type (farmland or wetland/grass), distance to roosts, and their interaction terms influence the utilization of food resources for each species and region. To this aim we use satellite tracking of 28 tundra bean geese Anser serrirostris and 55 greater white-fronted geese A. albifrons, a newly produced 30 m land cover map, and the terrestrial human footprint map.ResultsGeese use farmland intensively at their stopover site, but hardly at their wintering site, though both regions have farmland available at a similar proportion. The human pressure on both farmland and wetland/grass is significantly lower at the stopover region compared to the wintering region. At both sites, the two goose species actively select for farmland and/or wetland/grass with a relatively low human pressure, positioned relatively close to their roosting sites.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that if human pressure were to decrease in the farmlands close to the roost, China's wintering geese could benefit from farmland. We recommend setting aside farmland near roosting sites that already experiences a relatively low human pressure as goose refuges, and adopt measures to further reduce human pressure and increase food quality and quantity, to help counter the decline of China's wintering goose populations. Our study has important conservation implications and offers a practical measure for migratory waterfowl conservation in areas of high human-wildlife conflict.

Dataset Information

Effects of Sex and Diet on Gut Microbiota of Farmland-Dependent Wintering Birds.

Publications

Effects of Sex and Diet on Gut Microbiota of Farmland-Dependent Wintering Birds.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets