Zhang Bing, Ren Jing, Yang Daode, Liu Shuoran, Gong Xinguo
Institute of Wildlife Conservation, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha, Hunan, China.
Institute of Eastern-Himalaya Biodiversity Research, Dali University, Dali, Yunnan, China.
PeerJ. 2019 Mar 29;7:e6658. doi: 10.7717/peerj.6658. eCollection 2019.
The gut microbiota plays an important role in host immunity and metabolic homeostasis. Although analyses of gut microbiotas have been used to assess host health and foster disease prevention and treatment, no comparative comprehensive study, assessing gut microbiotas among several species of farmed snake, is yet available. In this study, we characterized and compared the gut microbiotas of four species of farmed snakes (, , , and ) using high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rDNA gene in southern China and tested whether there was a relationship between gut microbiotal composition and host species.
A total of 629 operational taxonomic units across 22 samples were detected. The five most abundant phyla were Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Fusobacteria, and Actinobacteria, while the five most abundant genera were , , , , and . This was the first report of the dominance of Fusobacteria and in the snake gut. Our phylogenetic analysis recovered a relatively close relationship between Fusobacteria and Bacteroidetes. Alpha diversity analysis indicated that species richness and diversity were highest in the gut microbiota of and lowest in that of . Significant differences in alpha diversity were detected among the four farmed snake species. The gut microbiotas of conspecifics were more similar to each other than to those of heterospecifics.
This study provides the first comparative study of gut microbiotas among several species of farmed snakes, and provides valuable data for the management of farmed snakes. In farmed snakes, host species affected the species composition and diversity of the gut microbiota.
肠道微生物群在宿主免疫和代谢稳态中发挥着重要作用。尽管对肠道微生物群的分析已被用于评估宿主健康并促进疾病的预防和治疗，但目前尚无对几种养殖蛇类的肠道微生物群进行比较的综合研究。在本研究中，我们利用中国南方16S rDNA基因的高通量测序对四种养殖蛇类（、、和）的肠道微生物群进行了表征和比较，并测试了肠道微生物群组成与宿主物种之间是否存在关系。
在22个样本中总共检测到629个可操作分类单元。丰度最高的五个门是拟杆菌门、变形菌门、厚壁菌门、梭杆菌门和放线菌门，而丰度最高的五个属是、、、和。这是关于梭杆菌门和在蛇肠道中占主导地位的首次报道。我们的系统发育分析发现梭杆菌门和拟杆菌门之间存在相对密切的关系。α多样性分析表明，物种丰富度和多样性在的肠道微生物群中最高，而在的肠道微生物群中最低。在四种养殖蛇类中检测到α多样性存在显著差异。同种蛇的肠道微生物群彼此之间比与异种蛇的更相似。
本研究首次对几种养殖蛇类的肠道微生物群进行了比较研究，为养殖蛇的管理提供了有价值的数据。在养殖蛇中，宿主物种影响肠道微生物群的物种组成和多样性。
