Interspecific comparison of the fecal microbiota structure in three Arctic migratory bird species

Abstract

The gut microbiota of birds is known to be characterized for different species, although it may change with feeding items. In this study, we compared the gut microbiota of birds with different feeding behaviors in the same habitat. We collected fecal samples from three Arctic species, snow buntings Plectrophenax nivalis, sanderlings Calidris alba, and pink‐footed geese Anser brachyrhynchus that are phylogenetically quite distant in different families to evaluate effects of diet on gut microbiota. Also, we characterized the prevalence of fecal bacteria using the Illumina MiSeq platform to sequence bacterial 16S rRNA genes. Our NMDS results showed that fecal bacteria of snow buntings and sanderlings were significantly distant from those of pink‐footed geese. Although all three birds were occupied by three bacterial phyla, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Bacteroidetes, dominant taxa still varied among the species. Our bacterial sequences showed that snow buntings and sanderlings were dominated by Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, while pink‐footed geese were dominated by Proteobacteria. In addition, the bacterial diversity in snow buntings and sanderlings was significantly higher than that in pink‐footed geese. Our results suggest that insectivorous feeding diet of snow buntings and sanderlings could be responsible for the similar bacterial communities between the two species despite the distant phylogenetic relationship. The distinctive bacterial community in pink‐footed geese was discussed to be related with their herbivorous diet.

Comparative Analysis of the Gut Microbial Communities of the Eurasian Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) at Different Developmental Stages

“…In recent years, in order to better understand the interactions between gut microbes and their hosts, studies of gut microbes conducted on singlespecies or multi-species host have been carried out in many animal groups including mammals (Lu et al, 2012;Russell et al, 2012;Tung et al, 2015;Davis M. Y. et al, 2016;de Goffau et al, 2019;Xiao et al, 2019), birds (Ding et al, 2016(Ding et al, , 2020Grond et al, 2017), reptiles (Ren et al, 2016;Kohl et al, 2017), and fish (Davis D. J. et al, 2016). Studies on avian gut microbiota have increased rapidly since 2014 (Hird et al, 2015;Kohl et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2019b;Capunitan et al, 2020;Cho and Lee, 2020;Song et al, 2020), remain heavily outnumbered by studies of mammals, and are dominated by research on domestic poultry (Cui et al, 2017) or captive-bred model species (Ding et al, 2020). Therefore, wild birds remain understudied despite their relevance for pathogen transmission and for understanding diet and environmental influences on gut microbial structure and function.…”

Gut microbiome of migratory shorebirds: Current status and future perspectives

“…We synthesized published 16S rRNA gene data (Table 1, 506 samples using high-throughput sequencing technology) in the migratory shorebirds (Cho & Lee, 2020;Grond et al, 2019Grond et al, , 2020Risely et al, 2017Risely et al, , 2018 and found the predominant phyla of these 13 shorebird species include Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, Fusobacteria, and Actinobacteria (Figure 1). Firmicutes is also a dominant phylum in the other seven migratory shorebirds (Table 1): Clone sequencing: Himantopus himantopus, Limosa limosa, and Tringa totanus (Santos et al, 2012); clone sequencing: Arenaria interpres, Calidris canutus, and Calidris pusilla (Ryu et al, 2014); one sample: Actitis hypoleucos (Capunitan et al, 2020).…”

“…Social contact among intraspecies and interspecies may lead to the gut microbiome transmission and affect the gut bacterial communities in individual animals (Antwis et al, 2018;Archie & Tung, 2015;Grond et al, 2014;Kwong & Moran, 2016;Ryu et al, 2014). Different species of migratory shorebirds have direct or indirect contact because they share habitat and food during their migrations or breeding (Cho & Lee, 2020;Grond et al, 2019;Risely et al, 2017Risely et al, , 2018Ryu et al, 2014;Santos et al, 2012). Therefore, we speculated that the effects of social contact on the gut microbiome community of the migratory shorebirds might also modify the effects contributed by host phylogeny.…”

“…The main migration route worldwide (The sample location data were referred to published data: Cho & Lee, 2020;Grond et al, 2020;Grond et al, 2019;Risely et al, 2018;Risely et al, 2017;Ryu et al, 2014;Santos et al, 2012…”

29. How to Write a Book Chapter?

“…Fig 28. Relative abundances of dominant bacterial phyla in the faeces of three arctic birds (B4, B5, B6, B9-Snow bunting; S1, S2, S3, S5, S6-Sanderling; P1, P2, P3, P4, P6-Pink-footed goose).…”