Abstract
Marine mammals play crucial ecological roles in the oceans, but little is known about their microbiotas. Here we study the bacterial communities in 337 samples from 5 body sites in 48 healthy dolphins and 18 healthy sea lions, as well as those of adjacent seawater and other hosts. The bacterial taxonomic compositions are distinct from those of other mammals, dietary fish and seawater, are highly diverse and vary according to body site and host species. Dolphins harbour 30 bacterial phyla, with 25 of them in the mouth, several abundant but poorly characterized Tenericutes species in gastric fluid and a surprisingly paucity of Bacteroidetes in distal gut. About 70% of near-full length bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA sequences from dolphins are unique. Host habitat, diet and phylogeny all contribute to variation in marine mammal distal gut microbiota composition. Our findings help elucidate the factors structuring marine mammal microbiotas and may enhance monitoring of marine mammal health.
Highlights
Marine mammals play crucial ecological roles in the oceans, but little is known about their microbiotas
We examined bacterial phylogenetic diversity (PD) in the mouth, forestomach fluid (‘gastric fluid’), respiratory tract and rectum of common bottlenose dolphins
While terrestrial mammalian hosts are the subject of an ever-increasing number of microbiome studies[5,6,46] there have been relatively few studies of marine mammal microbiotas
Summary
Marine mammals play crucial ecological roles in the oceans, but little is known about their microbiotas. We study the bacterial communities in 337 samples from 5 body sites in 48 healthy dolphins and 18 healthy sea lions, as well as those of adjacent seawater and other hosts. The bacterial taxonomic compositions are distinct from those of other mammals, dietary fish and seawater, are highly diverse and vary according to body site and host species. Dolphins harbour 30 bacterial phyla, with 25 of them in the mouth, several abundant but poorly characterized Tenericutes species in gastric fluid and a surprisingly paucity of Bacteroidetes in distal gut. Diet and phylogeny all contribute to variation in marine mammal distal gut microbiota composition. Marine Mammal Foundation, San Diego, California 92106, USA. 6 Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific, San Diego, California 92152, USA
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