Abstract
Waterbirds are ubiquitous and globally distributed. Yet, studies on wild waterbirds’ gut microbiota are still rare. Our aim was to explore and compare the gut microbial community composition of wild waterbird species. Four wild waterbird species that are either wintering or all-year residents in Israel were studied: great cormorants, little egrets, black-crowned night herons and black-headed gulls. For each bird, three intestinal sections were sampled; anterior, middle and posterior. No significant differences were found among the microbiota compositions in the three intestine sections of each individual bird. Each waterbird species had a unique microbial composition. The gut microbiota of the black-headed gulls’ fundamentally deviated from that of the other bird species, probably due to a very high abundance (58.8%) of the genus Catellicoccus (Firmicutes). Our results suggest a correlation between the waterbird species’ phylogeny and their intestine microbial community hierarchical tree, which evinced phylosymbiosis. This recent coinage stands for eco-evolutionary patterns between the host phylogeny and its microbiota composition. We conclude that eco-evolutionary processes termed phylosymbiosis may occur between wild waterbird species and their gut microbial community composition.
Highlights
All living organisms host microorganism assemblages that are referred to as microbiomes
Our results demonstrate that individual birds from each bird species differed, each species inhabited a unique gut bacterial community composition
Potential pathogenic genera were identified in the gut microbiota of the different species, suggesting that waterbirds may disseminate pathogenic species like Clostridium, Helicobacter, Campylobacter, Vibrio, etc., between waterbodies
Summary
All living organisms host microorganism assemblages that are referred to as microbiomes. The host together with its endogenous microbial community constantly undergoes a mutual evolutionary process and the hosts’ genome and its microbiome can be referred to as a “hologenome.” Shapira (2016) distinguished between a host-adapted core microbiota that may be vertically transmitted and a transient microbiota that their pool may depend on environmental conditions. The evolutionary relation between the host and its microbiome was redefined by Theis et al (2016) who suggested that the host and its microbiome undergo eco-evolutionary processes. These processes between a host’s and its microbiota is termed
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