Abstract
Microbial communities within the gut can markedly impact host health and fitness. To what extent environmental influences affect the differential distribution of these microbial populations may therefore significantly impact the successful farming of the host. Using a sea-based container culture (SBCC) system for the on-growing of European lobster (Homarus gammarus), we tracked the bacterial gut microbiota over a 1-year period. We compared these communities with lobsters of the same cohort, retained in a land-based culture (LBC) system to assess the effects of the culture environment on gut bacterial assemblage and describe the phylogenetic structure of the microbiota to compare deterministic and stochastic assembly across both environments. Bacterial gut communities from SBCCs were generally more phylogenetically clustered, and therefore deterministically assembled, compared to those reared in land-based systems. Lobsters in SBCCs displayed significantly more species-rich and species-diverse gut microbiota compared to those retained in LBC. A reduction in the bacterial diversity of the gut was also associated with higher infection prevalence of the enteric viral pathogen Homarus gammarus nudivirus (HgNV). SBCCs may therefore benefit the overall health of the host by promoting the assembly of a more diverse gut bacterial community and reducing the susceptibility to disease.
Highlights
Supplementary information The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.The gut microbiome is a community of microorganisms that demonstrates complex interactions with both the host organism and within itself
The average profile of a 0-week pre-deployment control (PDC) individual was composed of 96 exact sequence variants (ESVs) comprising four bacterial genera with over 2% relative abundance
Our results highlight the high degree of plasticity of the gut microbiota of the European lobster and demonstrate how environment, age, and infection status with a specific virus can correlate with differences in bacterial community composition
Summary
The gut microbiome is a community of microorganisms that demonstrates complex interactions with both the host organism and within itself. Changes in microbiome structure can correlate with digestive enzyme activity and the subsequent pre-digestion of host ingesta. The gut microbiota can aid in nutritional breakdown and contribute to the growth of the host [1,2,3]. A diverse microbiome can provide resistance against the proliferation of potentially pathogenic microbes, contributing to host immunity and improving survival [4, 5]. How the gut is colonised and maintained is somewhat unclear. Considering its association with host processes, environmental determinants of gut community composition may subsequently impact growth and survival of the host [6,7,8,9]
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