Impact of supplemental winter feeding on ruminal microbiota of roe deer Capreolus capreolus

Sara Ricci,Robin Sandfort,Beate Pinior,Stefanie U Wetzels,Gabrielle Stalder,Evelyne Mann

doi:10.2981/wlb.00572

Abstract

European ungulates such as the roe deer face seasonally varying climatic conditions as well as food availability and quality. In some European countries, including Austria, it is common practice to provide game animals with supplemental feeding in winter. In this study we investigated if supplemental feeding significantly affects the composition of the bacterial rumen community. The rumen microbial composition of eight adult female roe deer was analysed by Illumina MiSeq 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Animals from a study area with supplemental feeding sites were compared to individuals relying on natural feed. Furthermore, the microbial community composition of different ruminal compartments (liquid phase, solid phase and wall) was compared. Our results revealed a significant qualitative difference between the microbiota composition of the two populations studied. Easily fermentable supplemental feeding promoted the proliferation of phylotypes correlated with conditions of acidosis in domestic ruminants, suggesting a possible similar adaptation and a hypothetical negative effect on health status also in roe deer. The results furthermore confirmed that in roe deer, like in other ruminant species, the most represented phyla are Firmicutes (63.2%) and Bacteroidetes (23.5%), and that the ruminal microenvironments influence the microbial community composition, with the lowest species richness and variation in the epimural microbiota.

Highlights

Roe deer Capreolus capreolus populate wide areas of Europe, across a wide range of environmental conditions and habitat types
To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the ruminal microbiota composition of two different roe deer populations fed on different diets during winter
There is a lack of studies investigating European roe deer Capreolus capreolus ruminal microbiota, the results of this work are in accordance with the findings of similar studies, investigating the microbiota of Siberian roe deer Capreolus pygargus (Li et al 2014), other wild cervids (Gruninger et al 2014, Salgado-Flores et al 2016) as well as other wild and domestic ruminants species (Kim et al 2011, Henderson et al 2015)

Summary

Introduction

Roe deer Capreolus capreolus populate wide areas of Europe, across a wide range of environmental conditions and habitat types. During the winter months roe deer, like other wild ruminants, have to adapt their nutritional and physiological strategies to the seasonal variation of lower food quality and availability (Gębczyńska 1980, Tixier et al 1997, Arnold et al 2015, Krasnov et al 2015). We investigated the ruminal microbiota composition of two different roe deer populations in winter, of which one had access to feeding sites and one relied on natural feed

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