Abstract
The gut microbiota helps the host to absorb nutrients and generate immune responses that can affect host behavior, development, reproduction, and overall health. However, in most of the previous studies, microbiota was sampled mainly using feces and intestinal contents from mammals but not from wild reptiles. Here, we described the bacterial profile from five different gastrointestinal tract (GIT) segments (esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, and cloaca) of three wild Rhabdophis subminiatus using 16S rRNA V4 hypervariable amplicon sequencing. Forty‐seven bacterial phyla were found in the entire GIT, of which Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Bacteroidetes were predominant. The results showed a significant difference in microbial diversity between the upper GIT segments (esophagus and stomach) and lower GIT segments (large intestine and cloaca). An obvious dynamic distribution of Fusobacteria and Bacteroidetes was observed, which mainly existed in the lower GIT segments. Conversely, the distribution of Tenericutes was mainly observed in the upper GIT. We also predicted the microbial functions in the different GIT segments, which showed that microbiota in each segments played an important role in higher membrane transport and carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism. Microbes in the small intestine were also mainly involved in disease‐related systems, while in the large intestine, they were associated with membrane transport and carbohydrate metabolism. This is the first study to investigate the distribution of the gut microbiota and to predict the microbial function in R. subminiatus. The composition of the gut microbiota certainly reflects the diet and the living environment of the host. Furthermore, these findings provide vital evidence for the diagnosis and treatment of gut diseases in snakes and offer a direction for a model of energy budget research.
Highlights
The gastrointestinal (GI) tract of most animals harbors hundreds of millions of microbes (Colston & Jackson, 2016)
The results showed a significant difference between the upper gastrointestinal tract (GIT) segments and the lower GIT segments; the upper GIT segments showed a higher bacterial abundance than did the lower GIT segments
We found that the main bacterial taxon was Aeromonadaceae and speculated that wild R. subminiatus are more likely to survive near aquatic environments
Summary
The gastrointestinal (GI) tract of most animals harbors hundreds of millions of microbes (Colston & Jackson, 2016). Previous studies have shown that carnivorous, herbivorous, and omnivorous animals have different gut microbiota compositions (Ley, Hamady, et al, 2008; Xue et al, 2015). GIT microbiome studies have mainly focused on herbivores, omnivores, and domestic animals, whereas the gut microbial composition of carnivorous wild animals has yet to be widely explored. Studies on the composition of microbiota in different GIT segments have been carried out on animals with various diets, including mice (Suzuki & Nachman, 2016), pigs (Zhao et al, 2015), bactrian camels (He et al, 2018), sheep (Zhang et al, 2018), alligators (Keenan, Engel, & Elsey, 2013), and snakes (Colston, Noonan, & Jackson, 2015). Exploring the composition of microbiota and their potential function in different segments of the GIT could enhance our knowledge of ecology, host interaction, and adaptive evolution
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