Dietary niche partitioning between sympatric wood mouse species (Muridae: Apodemus) revealed by DNA meta-barcoding analysis

Sato, Jun J.; Shimada, Takuya; Kyogoku, Daisuke; Komura, Takashi; Uemura, Shigeru; Saitoh, Takashi; Isagi, Yuji

doi:10.1093/jmammal/gyy063

Cited by 34 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 48 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In fact, acorn abundance ( Quercus crispula ) has been shown to have a positive effect on annual population growth rates of A. speciosus (Onodera et al, ). The reliance of A. speciosus on acorns over autumn and winter means that their tannin intake increases significantly over these colder months, while little tannin is consumed for the rest of the year (Shimada, Nishii, & Saitoh, , Sato et al, ). This seasonal dietary shift provides an interesting case for investigating the relationship between temperature and tannin intake.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cold temperature improves tannin tolerance in a granivorous rodent

Windley

Shimada

2019

Journal of Animal Ecology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The foraging ecology of mammalian herbivores is regulated in part by their ability to detoxify plant secondary metabolites (PSM). Ambient temperature has been shown to alter liver function in rodents and the toxicity of some PSMs, but little is known about the physiological and nutritional consequences of consuming PSMs at different ambient temperatures. Furthermore, the effect of ambient temperature on the response of mammals to the most ubiquitous class of PSM, tannins, is unknown. We measured the effect of temperature and tannin intake on liver function, and the subsequent effect on the tannin tolerance of wild Japanese wood mice, Apodemus speciosus. The experiment involved acclimation to one of two ambient temperatures (10°C or 20°C) followed by acclimation to a diet of acorns (6.2% tannin DW). Liver function was measured both before and after acclimation to acorns by measuring the clearance time of a hypnotic agent. Finally, the mice were fed only acorns in a 5‐day feeding experiment to assess their tolerance to tannin in the diet. Acclimation to acorns had a significant effect on liver function, but the direction of this effect was dependent on ambient temperature. Acorn consumption improved the liver function of wood mice at 10°C, but reduced liver function at 20°C, revealing a complex relationship between ambient temperature and tannin intake on liver function. Furthermore, mice with better liver function, indicated by faster clearance of the hypnotic agent, exhibited higher protein digestibility on an acorn‐only diet, indicative of higher tannin tolerance. These results suggest that environmental temperature plays a significant role in the tolerance of A. speciosus to tannins, providing new insight into their seasonal feeding behaviour and winter ecology. We contend that cold‐induced tannin tolerance may help to explain the population dynamics of mammalian herbivores with seasonal changes in the tannin content of their diet, and inform predictions about the response of these animals to a changing climate.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cold temperature improves tannin tolerance in a granivorous rodent

Windley

Shimada

2019

Journal of Animal Ecology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Other approaches, unexplored here, such as the use of multiple primer pairs [41, 88], the use of primers known to provide quantitative results [37, 43] or avoiding the PCR step by doing shotgun sequencing [89, 90] may be used to overcome part of the mentioned biases. It is also possible that composition of simpler diets may be better estimated by RRA than in the situation here [91, 92].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The menu varies with metabarcoding practices: A case study with the bat Plecotus auritus

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Metabarcoding of feces has revolutionized the knowledge of animal diets by providing unprecedented resolution of consumed resources. However, it is still unclear how different methodological approaches influence the ecological conclusions that can be drawn from such data. Here, we propose a critical evaluation of several data treatments on the inferred diet of the bat Plecotus auritus using guano regularly collected from various colonies throughout the entire active season. First and unlike previous claims, our data indicates that DNA extracted from large amounts of fecal material issued from guano accumulates yield broader taxonomic diversity of prey than smaller numbers of pellets would do, provided that extraction buffer volumes are adapted to such increased amounts of material. Second, trophic niche analyses based on prey occurrence data uncover strong seasonality in the bat’s diet and major differences among neighboring maternity colonies. Third, while the removal of rare prey items is not always warranted as it introduces biases affecting particularly samples with greater prey species richness. Fourth, examination of distinct taxonomic depths in diet analyses highlights different aspects of food consumption providing a better understanding of the consumer’s diet. Finally, the biologically meaningful patterns recovered with presence-absence approaches are virtually lost when attempting to quantify prey consumed using relative read abundances. Even in an ideal situation where reference barcodes are available for most potential prey species, inferring realistic patterns of prey consumption remains relatively challenging. Although best practice in metabarcoding analyses will depend on the aims of the study, several previous methodological recommendations seem unwarranted for studying such diverse diets as that of brown long-eared bats.

show abstract

“…For example, in marine ecosystems, frequent consumption of jelly fish by two albatross species (McInnes, Alderman, et al, 2017) and deep sea fishes by shearwater (Komura, Ando, Horikoshi, Suzuki, & Isagi, 2018) were detected, indicating the usefulness of the method for ecosystem monitoring through the diet of marine predators. High resolution taxon identification by fecal metabarcoding also clearly has shown niche partitioning and overlap of sympatric species, for example, bats (Burgar et al., 2014), rodents (Sato et al., 2018; Soininen et al., 2015), and large mammals (Kartzinel et al., 2015; Smith, Thomas, Levi, Wang, & Wilmers, 2018). In these studies, fecal metabarcoding has been effectively used to address general ecological questions.…”

Section: Trends In Publication Study Area and Target Animal Taxamentioning

confidence: 99%

Methodological trends and perspectives of animal dietary studies by noninvasive fecal DNA metabarcoding

Ando

Mukai

Komura³

et al. 2020

Environmental DNA

Self Cite

110

106

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Molecular scatology is a genetic technique used to analyze feces in studies of animal ecology (Kohn & Wayne, 1997), and it encompasses the field of environmental DNA studies (Taberlet, Coissac, Hajibabaei, & Rieseberg, 2012). Since 1990, fecal samples have been commonly used as noninvasive genetic sources for animal populations to estimate phylogeny, home range, and population sizes (Kohn & Wayne, 1997). Simultaneously, molecular techniques to detect food items from fecal DNA have been developed to overcome the difficulties of detecting food through conventional methods. Fecal DNA analyses are able to detect prey items that are difficult to identify by direct observations of feeding behavior, and these analyses also help where a robust diagnostic tool for identifying morphological features from visual observation of gut contents and feces is lacking. The first DNA-based diet studies detected specific food by taxon-specific PCR amplification (Deagle et al., 2005; Höss, Kohn, Pääbo, Knauer, & Schröder, 1992). Then, cloning and Sanger sequencing were used to isolate food DNA sequences from a multispecies mixture of fecal DNA (Deagle et al., 2007; Jarman, Deagle, & Gales, 2004). The taxa of the obtained sequences were identified by

show abstract

Dietary niche partitioning between sympatric wood mouse species (Muridae: Apodemus) revealed by DNA meta-barcoding analysis

Cited by 34 publications

References 48 publications

Cold temperature improves tannin tolerance in a granivorous rodent

Cold temperature improves tannin tolerance in a granivorous rodent

The menu varies with metabarcoding practices: A case study with the bat Plecotus auritus

Methodological trends and perspectives of animal dietary studies by noninvasive fecal DNA metabarcoding

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About