Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
National Research Center for Radiation Medicine of the National Academy of Medical Science, Kyiv, Ukraine.
J Anim Ecol. 2022 Jul;91(7):1535-1545. doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.13667. Epub 2022 Jun 13.
Evidence that exposure to environmental pollutants can alter the gut microbiota composition of wildlife includes studies of rodents exposed to radionuclides. Antwis et al. (2021) used amplicon sequencing to characterise the gut microbiota of four species of rodent (Myodes glareolus, Apodemus agrarius, A. flavicollis and A. sylvaticus) inhabiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) to examine possible changes in gut bacteria (microbiota) and gut fungi (mycobiota) associated with exposure to radionuclides and whether the sample type (from caecum or faeces) affected the analysis. The conclusions derived from the analyses of gut mycobiota are based on data that represent a mixture of ingested fungi (e.g. edible macrofungi, polypores, lichens and ectomycorrhizae) and gut mycobiota (e.g. microfungi and yeasts), which mask the patterns of inter- and intraspecific variation in the authentic gut mycobiota. Implying that 'faecal samples are not an accurate indicator of gut composition' creates an unnecessary controversy about faecal sampling because the comparison of samples from the caecum and faeces confounds many other possible drivers (including different animals from different locations, sampled in different years) of variation in gut microbiota. It is relevant also that Antwis et al.'s (2021) data lack statistical power to detect an effect of exposure to radionuclides on the gut microbiota because (1) all of their samples of Apodemus mice had experienced a medium or high total absorbed dose rate and (2) they did not collect samples of bank voles (M. glareolus) from replicate contaminated and uncontaminated locations. Discussion of Antwis et al.'s (2021) analysis, especially the claims presented in the Abstract, is important to prevent controversy about the outcome of research on the biological impacts of wildlife inhabiting the CEZ.
有证据表明，暴露于环境污染物会改变野生动物的肠道微生物群落组成，其中包括研究放射性核素暴露对啮齿动物的影响。Antwis 等人（2021 年）使用扩增子测序技术来描述栖息在切尔诺贝利隔离区（CEZ）的四种啮齿动物（白腹毛脚燕、黑线姬鼠、黄胸鼠和大林姬鼠）的肠道微生物群，以检查肠道细菌（微生物群）和肠道真菌（真菌群）是否因暴露于放射性核素而发生变化，以及样本类型（盲肠或粪便）是否会影响分析。肠道真菌群分析的结论是基于数据得出的，这些数据代表了摄入真菌（如可食用的大型真菌、多孔菌、地衣和外生菌根）和肠道真菌群（如微型真菌和酵母）的混合物，掩盖了真实肠道真菌群的种间和种内变异模式。提出“粪便样本不能准确反映肠道组成”的观点，这是对粪便采样的一种不必要的争议，因为盲肠和粪便样本的比较混淆了许多其他可能的驱动因素（包括来自不同地点、不同年份采样的不同动物）对肠道微生物群落变化的影响。同样相关的是，Antwis 等人（2021 年）的数据缺乏统计能力来检测放射性核素暴露对肠道微生物群的影响，因为（1）他们所有的黑线姬鼠样本都经历了中等或高的总吸收剂量率，（2）他们没有从受污染和未受污染的重复地点采集林姬鼠（白腹毛脚燕）的样本。讨论 Antwis 等人（2021 年）的分析，特别是摘要中提出的观点，对于防止对栖息在 CEZ 的野生动物的生物学影响的研究结果产生争议是很重要的。
