Diet Diversity Is Associated with Beta but not Alpha Diversity of Pika Gut Microbiota.

DeAnna E. Beasley,Zhishu Xiao,Shiheng Zhang,Xiangzhen Li,Qiang Lin,Jiabao Li,Huan Li,Tongtong Li,Petr Heděnec

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2016.01169

Abstract

Wild mammals often consume different food sources as they become geographical available. This change in diet composition is likely to influence the gut microbial community, yet it remains unclear what the relationship looks like—particularly in small herbivores—under natural conditions. We used DNA sequencing approaches to characterize the diet composition and gut microbial community of wild plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae) collected from three altitudes. We tested if diet and gut microbiota composition changes across altitudes, and the relationship between diet diversity and gut microbiota diversity. Our results showed that altitude significantly influences the composition of diet and gut microbial communities. Notably, the alpha diversity (Shannon diversity and observed OTUs) of individual diet was not significantly correlated with that of gut microbiota, whereas the beta diversity (Jaccard and Bray-Curtis dissimilarity) of diet was positively correlated with that of gut microbiota. Our study is the first time to highlight the relationship between diet and gut microbiota composition in wild pikas on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It suggests that the species richness within individual gut microbiota does not linearly increase with diet diversity, whereas those individuals that are more similar in diet composition harbor more similar gut microbiota.

Highlights

Mammalian digestive systems harbor diverse and complex microbial communities that play an important role in shaping host health and function (Tremaroli and Backhed, 2012)
Using plateau pika as a model, we address two key questions:(i) whether altitude influences the composition and structure of diet and gut microbiota ? (ii) Whether individual’s diet diversity is associated with gut microbial diversity? We found that gut microbial species does not linearly increase with diet species, whereas those individuals that are more similar in diet composition harbor more similar gut microbiota
The diet composition of each animal individual was visualized in Figure 1A.We found that the relative abundances of Spermatophyta were significantly different across altitudes (P < 0.05, Table S3)

Summary

Introduction

Mammalian digestive systems harbor diverse and complex microbial communities that play an important role in shaping host health and function (Tremaroli and Backhed, 2012). Understanding how host and environmental factors regulate the composition and diversity of gut microbiota is a key step in assessing mammalian health (Bolnick et al, 2014; Carmody et al, 2015; Pérez-Cobas et al, 2015; Ussar et al, 2015). Diet Diversity and Gut Microbial Diversity fiber (Tap et al, 2015), or linear univariate values, such as caloric intake (Zhang et al, 2013) These controlled studies provide insight into how a specific aspect of an organism’s diet influences the gut microbiota. They do not account for feeding behaviors under natural conditions where organisms are likely to eat a variety of different foods (Baxter et al, 2015) to meet nutritional demands. To date, little is known about the relationship between diet diversity and gut microbial diversity in wild mammals, such as herbivores, because it is difficult to accurately evaluate the diet composition

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Conclusion