Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California-Berkeley, 147 Hilgard Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
Missouri Department of Conservation, 2901 W. Truman Blvd, Jefferson City, MO, 65109, USA.
Microb Ecol. 2019 Apr;77(3):782-793. doi: 10.1007/s00248-018-1258-1. Epub 2018 Sep 12.
Variation in environmental conditions can result in disparate associations between hosts and microbial symbionts. As such, it is imperative to evaluate how environmental variables (e.g., habitat quality) can influence host-associated microbiome composition. Within wildlife conservation programs, captive conditions can negatively influence the establishment and maintenance of "wild-type" microbiotas within a host. Alternative microbial communities can result in the proliferation of disease among captive stock or upon reintroduction. Hellbenders (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) are a threatened salamander for which extensive captive management is currently employed. Using metabarcoding, we characterized the skin microbiota of wild and captive hellbenders from two subspecies in the state of Missouri, the eastern (C. a. alleganiensis) and the Ozark hellbender (C. a. bishopi). Both subspecies in our study included wild adults and captive juveniles that were collected from the wild as eggs. Our objectives were to investigate differences in the skin microbial communities' richness/diversity, composition, and functional profiles of microbes between wild and captive individuals. Captive eastern hellbenders possessed richer communities than wild cohorts, whereas the opposite pattern was observed within the Ozark subspecies. We found significant microbial community structure between wild and captive populations of both subspecies. Microbiota structure translated into differences in the predicted metagenome of wild and captive individuals as well. As such, we can expect captive hellbenders to experience alternative microbial structure and function upon reintroduction into the wild. Our study provides a baseline for the effect of captivity on the skin microbial communities of hellbenders, and highlights the need to incorporate microbiota management in current captive-rearing programs.
环境条件的变化会导致宿主和微生物共生体之间产生不同的关联。因此，评估环境变量（例如，栖息地质量）如何影响宿主相关微生物组的组成是至关重要的。在野生动物保护计划中，圈养条件会对宿主体内“典型”微生物群的建立和维持产生负面影响。替代微生物群落可能导致圈养种群或重新引入时疾病的扩散。隐鳃鲵（Cryptobranchus alleganiensis）是一种受到威胁的蝾螈，目前广泛采用圈养管理。通过宏条形码技术，我们对来自密苏里州两个亚种的野生和圈养隐鳃鲵的皮肤微生物群进行了特征描述，这两个亚种分别是东部隐鳃鲵（C. a. alleganiensis）和奥沙克隐鳃鲵（C. a. bishopi）。我们研究中的两个亚种都包括野生成体和从野外收集的野生卵的圈养幼体。我们的目标是研究野生和圈养个体之间皮肤微生物群落的丰富度/多样性、组成和功能特征的差异。圈养的东部隐鳃鲵拥有比野生种群更丰富的群落，而奥沙克亚种则出现了相反的模式。我们发现两个亚种的野生和圈养种群之间存在显著的微生物群落结构差异。微生物群落结构差异也导致了野生和圈养个体预测宏基因组的差异。因此，我们可以预期，重新引入野外后，圈养的隐鳃鲵会经历替代的微生物结构和功能。本研究为圈养对隐鳃鲵皮肤微生物群落的影响提供了一个基线，并强调了在当前的圈养繁殖计划中需要纳入微生物群管理。
