Abstract
Microbial communities residing in the gastrointestinal tracts of animals have profound impacts on the physiological processes of their hosts. In humans, host-specific and environmental factors likely interact together to shape gut microbial communities, resulting in remarkable inter-individual differences. However, we still lack a full understanding of to what extent microbes are individual-specific and controlled by host-specific factors across different animal taxa. Here, we document the gut microbial characteristics in two estrildid finch species, the Bengalese finch (Lonchura striata domestica) and the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) to investigate between-species and within-species differences. We collected fecal samples from breeding pairs that were housed under strictly controlled environmental and dietary conditions. All individuals were sampled at five different time points over a range of 120 days covering different stages of the reproductive cycle. We found significant species-specific differences in gut microbial assemblages. Over a period of 3 months, individuals exhibited unique, individual-specific microbial profiles. Although we found a strong individual signature in both sexes, within-individual variation in microbial communities was larger in males of both species. Furthermore, breeding pairs had more similar microbial profiles, compared to randomly chosen males and females. Our study conclusively shows that host-specific factors contribute structuring of gut microbiota.
Highlights
Animal bodies are inhabited by billions of microorganisms, which are collectively termed microbiota
We sequenced the hypervariable V3–V4 region of the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene from 210 gut microbial community samples originating from 42 individual birds
We identified 20 microbial phyla, with the domination of Firmicutes (79.15%), Campilobacterota (14.07%), Proteobacteria (4.36%), and Actinobacteria (2.40%)
Summary
Animal bodies are inhabited by billions of microorganisms, which are collectively termed microbiota. At the same time, considering the vital functions of the microbes in several physiological processes of the hosts, the gut microbiota, or at least a subset of microorganisms should be conserved among the members of the same species In line with these assumptions, human microbiota consists of some temporally stable microbial species that are highly adapted to their host, along with some transient taxa that respond quite rapidly to the dietary, developmental, and physiological alterations (Turnbaugh et al, 2007; Lozupone et al, 2012; Lloyd-Price et al, 2017). In this rapidly growing field, we are still lacking the knowledge to what extent microbial communities are similar between conspecifics, what drives interindividual differences and if and how stable are communities across the distinct life-history stages of individual hosts in non-human species
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