Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States of America.
Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Mar 5;15(3):e0220926. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220926. eCollection 2020.
Microbial communities in the gastrointestinal tract influence many aspects of host health, including metabolism and susceptibility to pathogen colonization. These relationships and the environmental and individual factors that drive them are relatively unexplored for free-living wildlife. We quantified the relationships between urban habitat use, diet, and age with microbiome composition and diversity for 82 American white ibises (Eudocimus albus) captured along an urban gradient in south Florida and tested whether gut microbial diversity was associated with Salmonella enterica prevalence. Shifts in community composition were significantly associated with urban land cover and, to a lesser extent, diets higher in provisioned food. The diversity of genera was negatively associated with community composition associated with urban land cover, positively associated with age class, and negatively associated with Salmonella shedding. Our results suggest that shifts in both habitat use and diet for urban birds significantly alter gut microbial composition and diversity in ways that may influence health and pathogen susceptibility as species adapt to urban habitats.
肠道微生物群落影响宿主健康的多个方面，包括代谢和对病原体定植的易感性。对于自由生活的野生动物，这些关系以及驱动它们的环境和个体因素相对来说还没有得到探索。我们量化了 82 只佛罗里达州南部城市梯度上捕获的美洲白鹮（Eudocimus albus）的城市栖息地利用、饮食和年龄与微生物组组成和多样性之间的关系，并测试了肠道微生物多样性是否与肠炎沙门氏菌的流行有关。群落组成的变化与城市土地覆盖显著相关，与人为提供的食物为主的饮食的关系较小。属的多样性与与城市土地覆盖相关的群落组成呈负相关，与年龄组呈正相关，与肠炎沙门氏菌的排出呈负相关。我们的研究结果表明，城市鸟类的栖息地利用和饮食的变化显著改变了肠道微生物群落的组成和多样性，这可能会影响物种适应城市栖息地时的健康和病原体易感性。
