Comparative analysis and characterization of the gut microbiota of four farmed snakes from southern China
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Bioinformatics, Microbiology, Veterinary Medicine, Zoology
- Keywords
- Host species, Gut microbiota, High-throughput sequencing, Farmed snakes, Microbial diversity
- Copyright
- © 2018 Zhang et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Comparative analysis and characterization of the gut microbiota of four farmed snakes from southern China. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27193v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27193v1
Abstract
Background. The gut microbiota plays an important role in host immunity and metabolichomeostasis. Although analyses of gut microbiotas have been used to assess host health,as well as for disease prevention and treatment, no comparative study of gut microbiotasamong several species of farmed snake is yet available. In this study we characterized andcompared the gut microbiotas of four species of farmed snakes (Naja atra, Ptyas mucosus,Elaphe carinata, and Deinagkistrodon acutus) using high-throughput sequencing of the16S rDNA gene in southern China and tested whether there was a relationship betweengut microbiotal composition and host species. Results. A total of 629 operationaltaxonomic units (OTUs) across 22 samples were detected. The dominant bacterial phylawere Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Fusobacteria; the dominant bacterialgenera were Bacteroides and Cetobacterium. This was the first report of the dominance ofFusobacteria and Cetobacterium in the snake gut. Our phylogenetic analysis recovered arelatively close relationship between Fusobacteria and Bacteroidetes. Alpha diversityanalysis indicated that species richness and diversity were highest in the gut microbiota ofD. acutus and lowest in that of E. carinata. Significant differences in alpha diversity weredetected among the four farmed snake species. The gut microbiotas of conspecifics weremore similar to each other than to those of heterospecifics. Conclusion. This studyprovides the first comparative study of gut microbiotas among several species of farmedsnakes, and provides valuable data for the management of farmed snakes. In farmedsnakes, host species affected the species composition and diversity of the gut microbiota.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Operational taxonomic units (OTUs) rank curve
Na: Naja atra group, Pmu: Ptyas mucosus group, Ec: Elaphe carinata group, and Da: Deinagkistrodon acutus group.
Venn diagram indicating the shared and unique operational taxonomic units (OTUs) across all species
Na: Naja atra group, Pmu: Ptyas mucosus group, Ec: Elaphe carinata group, and Da: Deinagkistrodon acutus group.
Relative abundance of bacterial classes across four snake species
Na: Naja atra group, Pmu: Ptyas mucosus group, Ec: Elaphe carinata group, and Da: Deinagkistrodon acutus group.
Relative abundance of bacterial orders across four snake species
Na: Naja atra group, Pmu: Ptyas mucosus group, Ec: Elaphe carinata group, and Da: Deinagkistrodon acutus group.
Relative abundance of bacterial families across four snake species
Na: Naja atra group, Pmu: Ptyas mucosus group, Ec: Elaphe carinata group, and Da: Deinagkistrodon acutus group.
Principal component analysis of the microbiota composition across four snake species
The variation explained by the plotted principal component is indicated by the axis labels. Na: Naja atra group, Pmu: Ptyas mucosus group, Ec: Elaphe carinata group, and Da: Deinagkistrodon acutus group.