Dataset Information

Effect of Geography and Captivity on Scat Bacterial Communities in the Imperiled Channel Island Fox.

ABSTRACT: With developing understanding that host-associated microbiota play significant roles in individual health and fitness, taking an interdisciplinary approach combining microbiome research with conservation science is increasingly favored. Here we establish the scat microbiome of the imperiled Channel Island fox (Urocyon littoralis) and examine the effects of geography and captivity on the variation in bacterial communities. Using high throughput 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, we discovered distinct bacterial communities in each island fox subspecies. Weight, timing of the sample collection, and sex contributed to the geographic patterns. We uncovered significant taxonomic differences and an overall decrease in bacterial diversity in captive versus wild foxes. Understanding the drivers of microbial variation in this system provides a valuable lens through which to evaluate the health and conservation of these genetically depauperate foxes. The island-specific bacterial community baselines established in this study can make monitoring island fox health easier and understanding the implications of inter-island translocation clearer. The decrease in bacterial diversity within captive foxes could lead to losses in the functional services normally provided by commensal microbes and suggests that zoos and captive breeding programs would benefit from maintaining microbial diversity.

SUBMITTER: Adams NE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8672056 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:The groundwater biome is a poorly characterized habitat hypothesized to harbor uniquely diverse bacterial communities; the degree to which these communities differ from associated soils is a central question in environmental microbiology. We characterized the Bacterial community composition in 37 aquifer and 32 surface soil samples across the island of O'ahu, Hawai'i. Several bacterial phyla (Acetothermia, Omnitrophica, Parcubacteria, Peregrinibacteria) relatively abundant in the aquifer samples were rare to absent in the soils. Immense bacterial diversity detected in the deep aquifers indicates that these environments are not as homogenous as expected, but provide various niches and energy sources for wide variety of bacteria. A small proportion of OTUs were widespread in all the basal (0.63%) and all the dike aquifer (0.31%) samples. However, these core bacteria comprised an average of 31.8% (ranging 16.2%-62.0%) and 15.4% (0.1%-31.5%) of all sequences isolated from the basal and dike aquifers respectively. Bacterial community composition correlated significantly with the sodium, sulfate, potassium, total dissolved solids, nitrate, conductivity, and pH in the basal aquifers, while phosphate and bicarbonate levels were also highly important when dike water samples were included in the analyses. This was consistent with high relative abundance of putative chemolithoautoroph taxa in the aquifer communities relative to soils. Targeted molecular and culture-based fecal indicator microbial analyses indicated good water quality of aquifers. The dominance of unique, deeply branching lineages in tropical aquifers emphasizes a large adaptive potential in O'ahu's aquifers; variability among groundwater samples suggests that aquifer habitats are surprisingly variable potentially harboring a variety of chemolithotrophic energy sources. Although parallel analyses of conventional and alternative indicators indicated good groundwater quality, this study calls for groundwater monitoring programs which would consider public as well as ecosystem health.

Project description:Disease transmission and epidemic prevention are top conservation concerns for wildlife managers, especially for small, isolated populations. Previous studies have shown that the course of an epidemic within a heterogeneous host population is strongly influenced by whether pathogens are introduced to regions of relatively high or low host densities. This raises the question of how disease monitoring and vaccination programs are influenced by spatial heterogeneity in host distributions. We addressed this question by modeling vaccination and monitoring strategies for the Channel Island fox (Urocyon littoralis), which has a history of substantial population decline due to introduced disease. We simulated various strategies to detect and prevent epidemics of rabies and canine distemper using a spatially explicit model, which was parameterized from field studies. Increasing sentinel monitoring frequency, and to a lesser degree, the number of monitored sentinels from 50 to 150 radio collared animals, reduced the time to epidemic detection and percentage of the fox population infected at the time of detection for both pathogens. Fox density at the location of pathogen introduction had little influence on the time to detection, but a large influence on how many foxes had become infected by the detection day, especially when sentinels were monitored relatively infrequently. The efficacy of different vaccination strategies was heavily influenced by local host density at the site of pathogen entry. Generally, creating a vaccine firewall far away from the site of pathogen entry was the least effective strategy. A firewall close to the site of pathogen entry was generally more effective than a random distribution of vaccinated animals when pathogens entered regions of high host density, but not when pathogens entered regions of low host density. These results highlight the importance of considering host densities at likely locations of pathogen invasion when designing disease management plans.

Project description:Diseases threaten wildlife populations worldwide and have caused severe declines resulting in host species being listed as threatened or endangered. The risk of a widespread epidemic is especially high when pathogens are introduced to naive host populations, often leading to high morbidity and mortality. Prevention and control of these epidemics is based on knowledge of what drives pathogen transmission among hosts. Previous disease outbreaks suggest the spread of directly transmitted pathogens is determined by host contact rates and local host density. While theoretical models of disease spread typically assume a constant host density, most wildlife populations occur at a variety of densities across the landscape. We explored how spatial heterogeneity in host density influences pathogen spread by simulating the introduction and spread of rabies and canine distemper in a spatially heterogeneous population of Channel Island foxes (Urocyon littoralis), coupling fox density and contact rates with probabilities of viral transmission. For both diseases, the outcome of pathogen introductions varied widely among simulation iterations and depended on the density of hosts at the site of pathogen introduction. Introductions into areas of higher fox densities resulted in more rapid pathogen transmission and greater impact on the host population than if the pathogen was introduced at lower densities. Both pathogens were extirpated in a substantial fraction of iterations. Rabies was over five times more likely to go locally extinct when introduced at low host density sites than at high host-density sites, leaving an average of >99% of foxes uninfected. Canine distemper went extinct in >98% of iterations regardless of introduction site, but only after >90% of foxes had become infected. Our results highlight the difficulty in predicting the course of an epidemic, in part due to complex interactions between pathogen biology and host behavior, exacerbated by the spatial variation of most host populations.

Project description:Honeybee gut microbiota modulates the health and fitness of honeybees, the ecologically and economically important pollinators and honey producers. However, which processes drive the assembly and shift of honeybee gut microbiota remains unknown. To explore the patterns of honeybee gut bacterial communities across host species and geographical sites and the relative contribution of different processes (i.e., homogeneous selection, variable selection, homogeneous dispersal, dispersal limitation, and an undominated process) in driving the patterns, two honeybee species (Apis cerana and Apis mellifera) were sampled from five geographically distant sites along a latitudinal gradient, followed by gut bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The gut bacterial communities differed significantly between A. cerana and A. mellifera, which was driven by the interhost dispersal limitation associated with the long-term coevolution between hosts and their prokaryotic symbionts. A. mellifera harbored more diverse but less varied gut bacterial communities than A. cerana due to the dominant role of homogeneous selection in converging A. mellifera intestinal communities. For each honeybee species, the gut bacterial communities differed across geographical sites, with individuals from lower latitudes harboring higher diversity; also, there was significant decay of gut community similarity against geographic distance. The geographical variation of honeybee gut bacterial communities was mainly driven by an undominated process (e.g., stochastic drift) rather than variable selection or dispersal limitation. This study elucidates that variations in host and geography alter the relative contribution of different processes in assembling honeybee gut microbiota and, thus, provides insights into the mechanisms underlying honeybee gut microbial shifts across evolutionary time. IMPORTANCE Honeybees provide crucial pollination services and valuable apiarian products. The symbiotic intestinal communities facilitate honeybee health and fitness by promoting nutrient assimilation, detoxifying toxins, and resisting pathogens. Thus, understanding the processes that govern honeybee gut bacterial communities is imperative for better managing gut microbiota to improve honeybee health. However, little is known about the processes driving the assembly and shift of honeybee gut bacterial communities. This study quantitatively deciphers the relative importance of selection, dispersal, and undominated processes in governing the assembly of honeybee gut bacterial communities and explores how their relative importance varies across biological and spatial scales. Our study provides new insights into the mechanisms underlying the maintenance and shift of honeybee gut microbiota.

Dataset Information

Effect of Geography and Captivity on Scat Bacterial Communities in the Imperiled Channel Island Fox.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets