Abstract
The analysis of gut microbiota using fecal samples provides a non-invasive approach to understand the complex interactions between host species and their intestinal bacterial community. However, information on gut microbiota for wild endangered carnivores is scarce. The goal of this study was to describe the gut microbiota of two leopard subspecies, the Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) and North Chinese leopard (Panthera pardus japonensis). Fecal samples from the Amur leopard (n = 8) and North Chinese leopard (n = 13) were collected in Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park and Shanxi Tieqiaoshan Provincial Nature Reserve in China, respectively. The gut microbiota of leopards was analyzed via high-throughput sequencing of the V3–V4 region of bacterial 16S rRNA gene using the Life Ion S5™ XL platform. A total of 1,413,825 clean reads representing 4,203 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were detected. For Amur leopard samples, Firmicutes (78.4%) was the dominant phylum, followed by Proteobacteria (9.6%) and Actinobacteria (7.6%). And for the North Chinese leopard, Firmicutes (68.6%), Actinobacteria (11.6%) and Fusobacteria (6.4%) were the most predominant phyla. Clostridiales was the most diverse bacterial order with 37.9% for Amur leopard and 45.7% for North Chinese leopard. Based on the beta-diversity analysis, no significant difference was found in the bacterial community composition between the Amur leopard and North Chinese leopard samples. The current study provides the initial data about the composition and structure of the gut microbiota for wild Amur leopards and North Chinese leopards, and has laid the foundation for further investigations of the health, dietary preferences and physiological regulation of leopards.
Highlights
Leopards (Panthera pardus) are currently the most widely distributed wild felids (Jacobson et al, 2016), but they are confronted with worldwide population declines due to illegal poaching, prey depletion, habitat fragmentation, and anthropogenic disturbances (Balme, Slotow & Hunter, 2009; Hebblewhite et al, 2011; Kissui, 2008; Nowell & Jackson, 1996; Packer et al, 2011; Stein et al, 2016; Sunquist & Sunquist, 2002)
The Cat Classification Task Force of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Cat Specialist Group revised the taxonomy of leopards and included the North Chinese leopard in Amur leopard on account of the obscure biogeographical barrier between them (Kitchener et al, 2017), North Chinese leopard was described as the typical subspecies in North China since 1862 (Allen, 1938; Gray, 1862)
We observed that Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria were the three most predominant phyla in the gut microbiota of both Amur leopard and North Chinese leopard
Summary
Leopards (Panthera pardus) are currently the most widely distributed wild felids (Jacobson et al, 2016), but they are confronted with worldwide population declines due to illegal poaching, prey depletion, habitat fragmentation, and anthropogenic disturbances (Balme, Slotow & Hunter, 2009; Hebblewhite et al, 2011; Kissui, 2008; Nowell & Jackson, 1996; Packer et al, 2011; Stein et al, 2016; Sunquist & Sunquist, 2002). Once patrolling from Northeast China to southernmost portions of the Russian Far East and the Korean peninsula (Nowell & Jackson, 1996), the Amur leopard is currently confined to the adjacent habitats in the Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces in China and southwestern Primorsky Krai in Russia (Feng et al, 2017; Hebblewhite et al, 2011). Other evidence based on molecular biology supporting this classification for the two leopards are scarce, especially in North China
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