Habitat and seasonality shape the structure of tench (Tinca tinca L.) gut microbiome

Tomasz Dulski,Slawomir Ciesielski,Krzysztof Kozłowski

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-61351-1

Tomasz Dulski, Slawomir Ciesielski + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61351-1

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Journal: Scientific Reports	Publication Date: Mar 10, 2020
Citations: 49	License type: open-access

Affiliation: University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn

Abstract

Tench (Tinca tinca L.) is one of the most valued species of the Cyprinidae. This species is commercially important and has been intensively domesticated in recent years. To avoid excessive production losses, the health of farm fish must be maintained. Characterization of the tench gut microbiome can help achieve this goal, as the gastrointestinal microbiome plays an important role in host health. As part of this characterization, investigating the influence of the environment and season will help to understand the interrelationship between host and gut microbiota. Therefore, our aim was to use high-throughput 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing to profile the gut microbiome of tench. We studied two populations in summer and autumn: wild tench living in a lake and tench living in a pond in a semi-intensive fish farm. We found that, in the gut microbiome of all fish, the most abundant phylum was Proteobacteria, followed by Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria. Together, these phyla constituted up to 90% of the microbial communities. The abundance of Candidatus Xiphinematobacter differed significantly between lake and pond fish in summer, but not in autumn. In pond tench, Methylobacterium abundance was significantly lower in summer than in autumn. Mean Shannon, Chao1 indices and observed OTU’s indicated that microbial biodiversity was greater in the gut of lake fish than in that of pond fish. Beta-diversity analysis showed significant divergence between groups with both weighted and unweighted UniFrac distance matrices. Principal coordinates analysis revealed that more of the variance in microbial diversity was attributable to environment than to season. Although some of the diversity in lake tench gut microbiota could be attributable to feeding preferences of individual fish, our results suggest that environment is the main factor in determining gut microbiome diversity in tench.

Highlights

Tench (Tinca tinca L.) is one of the most valued species of Cyprinidae fish and has great commercial importance[1]
Much research involving comparative analysis of the microbiome of fish of the same species has shown that factors like environment and diet are two of many factors that influence the structure of the fish gut microbiota[9,10]
Because the fish-gut microbiome is important for host health, it is generally accepted that identification of the gastrointestinal microbiota is undoubtedly important for understanding the functional interactions between the microbes and the host[11]

Summary

Introduction

Tench (Tinca tinca L.) is one of the most valued species of Cyprinidae fish and has great commercial importance[1]. Tench is generally considered to be one of the original European cyprinid species, which most likely evolved from primitive Tertiary Paleoleuciscus in large lake systems of Central Europe[2] This species plays important roles in the environment, local economies and research. Much research involving comparative analysis of the microbiome of fish of the same species has shown that factors like environment and diet are two of many factors that influence the structure of the fish gut microbiota[9,10]. These factors may affect the microbiome by changing the relative abundance of individual groups of microorganisms. It can be used to enhance the economic benefits of aquaculture by supplementing the feed of farmed fish species with the necessary probiotics

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