Dataset Information

Microbial Biogeography along the Gastrointestinal Tract Segments of Sympatric Subterranean Rodents (Eospalax baileyi and Eospalax cansus).

ABSTRACT: In this study, based on high-throughput sequencing technology, the biodiversity and the community structure of microbiota in different GIT segments (the stomach, small intestine, cecum and rectum) of plateau zokors and Gansu zokors were studied and compared. A source tracking analysis for the microbial communities of different GIT segments was carried out using the fast expectation-maximization microbial source tracking (FEAST) method. We found that, for both species, the microbial community richness and diversity of the small intestine were almost the lowest while those of the cecum were the highest among the four segments of the GIT. Beta diversity analyses revealed that the bacterial community structures of different GIT segments were significantly different. As for the comparison between species, the bacterial community compositions of the whole GIT, as well as for each segment, were all significantly different. Source tracking conducted on both zokors indicated that the soil has little effect on the bacterial community of the GIT. A fairly high percentage of rectum source for the bacterial community of the stomach indicated that both zokors may engage in coprophagy.

SUBMITTER: Liu D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8614254 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Microbial Biogeography along the Gastrointestinal Tract Segments of Sympatric Subterranean Rodents (<i>Eospalax baileyi</i> and <i>Eospalax cansus</i>).

Liu Daoxin D Yan Jingyan J Wang Haijing H Jiang Feng F Song Pengfei P Cai Zhenyuan Z Zhang Tongzuo T

Animals : an open access journal from MDPI 20211118 11

In this study, based on high-throughput sequencing technology, the biodiversity and the community structure of microbiota in different GIT segments (the stomach, small intestine, cecum and rectum) of plateau zokors and Gansu zokors were studied and compared. A source tracking analysis for the microbial communities of different GIT segments was carried out using the fast expectation-maximization microbial source tracking (FEAST) method. We found that, for both species, the microbial community ric ...[more]

PMID: 34828028

Similar Datasets

Project description:Most herbivorous mammals have symbiotic microbes living in their gastrointestinal tracts that help with harvesting energy from recalcitrant plant fibre. The bulk of research into these microorganisms has focused on samples collected from faeces, representing the distal region of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. However, the GI tract in herbivorous mammals is typically long and complex, containing different regions with distinct physico-chemical properties that can structure resident microbial communities. Little work has been done to document GI microbial communities of herbivorous animals at these sites. In this study, we use 16S rRNA gene sequencing to characterize the microbial biogeography along the GI tract in two species of wombats. Specifically, we survey the microbes along four major gut regions (stomach, small intestine, proximal colon, distal colon) in a single bare-nosed wombat (Vombatus ursinus) and a single southern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons). Our preliminary results show that GI microbial communities of wombats are structured by GI region. For both wombat individuals, we observed a trend of increasing microbial diversity from stomach to distal colon. The microbial composition in the first proximal colon region was more similar between wombat species than the corresponding distal colon region in the same species. We found several microbial genera that were differentially abundant between the first proximal colon (putative site for primary plant fermentation) and distal colon regions (which resemble faecal samples). Surprisingly, only 10.6% (98) and 18.8% (206) of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) were shared between the first proximal colon region and the distal colon region for the bare-nosed and southern hairy-nosed wombat, respectively. These results suggest that microbial communities in the first proximal colon region-the putative site of primary plant fermentation in wombats-are distinct from the distal colon, and that faecal samples may have limitations in capturing the diversity of these communities. While faeces are still a valuable and effective means of characterising the distal colon microbiota, future work seeking to better understand how GI microbiota impact the energy economy of wombats (and potentially other hindgut-fermenting mammals) may need to take gut biogeography into account.

Project description:Wild-caught animals must cope with drastic lifestyle and dietary changes after being induced to captivity. How the gut microbiome structure of these animals will change in response receives increasing attention. The plateau zokor (Eospalax baileyi), a typic subterranean rodent endemic to the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, spends almost the whole life underground and is well adapted to the environmental pressures of both plateau and underground. However, how the gut microbiome of the plateau zokor will change in response to captivity has not been reported to date. This study compared the microbial community structure and functions of 22 plateau zokors before (the WS group) and after being kept in captivity for 15 days (the LS group, fed on carrots) using the 16S rRNA gene via high-throughput sequencing technology. The results showed that the LS group retained 973 of the 977 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in the WS group, and no new OTUs were found in the LS group. The dominant bacterial phyla were Bacteroides and Firmicutes in both groups. In alpha diversity analysis, the Shannon, Sobs, and ACE indexes of the LS group were significantly lower than those of the WS group. A remarkable difference (P < 0.01) between groups was also detected in beta diversity analysis. The UPGMA clustering, NMDS, PCoA, and Anosim results all showed that the intergroup difference was significantly greater than the intragroup difference. And compared with the WS group, the intragroup difference of the gut microbiota in the LS group was much larger, which failed to support the assumption that similar diets should drive convergence of gut microbial communities. PICRUSt revealed that although some functional categories displayed significant differences between groups, the relative abundances of these categories were very close in both groups. Based on all the results, we conclude that as plateau zokors enter captivity for a short time, although the relative abundances of different gut microbiota categories shifted significantly, they can maintain almost all the OTUs and the functions of the gut microbiota in the wild. So, the use of wild-caught plateau zokors in gut microbial studies is acceptable if the time in captivity is short.

Dataset Information

Microbial Biogeography along the Gastrointestinal Tract Segments of Sympatric Subterranean Rodents (Eospalax baileyi and Eospalax cansus).

Publications

Microbial Biogeography along the Gastrointestinal Tract Segments of Sympatric Subterranean Rodents (<i>Eospalax baileyi</i> and <i>Eospalax cansus</i>).

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets