Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, 21111 Lakeshore Road, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, H9X 3V9, Canada.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jan 13;11(1):1200. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-80557-x.
The role of the gut microbiome is increasingly being recognized by health scientists and veterinarians, yet its role in wild animals remains understudied. Variations in the gut microbiome could be the result of differential diets among individuals, such as variation between sexes, across seasons, or across reproductive stages. We evaluated the hypothesis that diet alters the avian gut microbiome using stable isotope analysis (SIA) and 16S rRNA gene sequencing. We present the first description of the thick-billed murre (Uria lomvia) fecal microbiome. The murre microbiome was dominated by bacteria from the genus Catellicoccus, ubiquitous in the guts of many seabirds. Microbiome variation was explained by murre diet in terms of proportion of littoral carbon, trophic position, and sulfur isotopes, especially for the classes Actinobacteria, Bacilli, Bacteroidia, Clostridia, Alphaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria. We also observed differences in the abundance of bacterial genera such as Catellicoccus and Cetobacterium between sexes and reproductive stages. These results are in accordance with behavioural observations of changes in diet between sexes and across the reproductive season. We concluded that the observed variation in the gut microbiome may be caused by individual prey specialization and may also be reinforced by sexual and reproductive stage differences in diet.
肠道微生物组的作用正日益受到健康科学家和兽医的重视，但它在野生动物中的作用仍未得到充分研究。肠道微生物组的变化可能是个体饮食差异的结果，例如性别、季节或生殖阶段的差异。我们使用稳定同位素分析 (SIA) 和 16S rRNA 基因测序来评估饮食改变鸟类肠道微生物组的假设。我们首次描述了厚嘴海鸬鹚 (Uria lomvia) 的粪便微生物组。海鸬鹚的微生物组主要由 Catellicoccus 属的细菌组成，这种细菌在许多海鸟的肠道中普遍存在。微生物组的变化可以用海鸬鹚的饮食来解释，包括沿海碳的比例、营养位和硫同位素，特别是对于放线菌、芽孢杆菌、拟杆菌、梭菌、α变形菌和γ变形菌等类群。我们还观察到了细菌属如 Catellicoccus 和 Cetobacterium 在性别和生殖阶段之间丰度的差异。这些结果与性行为观察到的两性之间和生殖季节期间饮食变化的结果一致。我们得出结论，肠道微生物组的观察到的变化可能是由于个体对猎物的专门化，也可能受到饮食在性别和生殖阶段差异的强化。
