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Bacterial diversity in the gastrointestinal tracts of four animals with different feeding habits

The animal phylogeny and feeding habits would affect the composition of gastrointestinal tract¡]GI tract¡^microbiota. GI tract microbiota plays an important role in host health and nutrient provision. In this study, we used PCR-DGGE and bacterial 16S rDNA sequencing to analyze the GI tract bacterial diversity of four animals with different feeding habits in Shou-Shan zoo, including one carnivore, one omnivore and two herbivores, in which one ruminant and one non-ruminant. The results show a great difference between GI tract bacterial diversity of the four animals. The abundance of GI tract bacterial diversity increased from carnivore, omnivore to herbivore. Comparing the similarity of the GI tract bacterial community structures of these four animals, the carnivore possessed the most different composition, to other animals, the next was the omnivore, while the two herbivores show the highest similarity to each other. Our results also indicated that the GI tract microbiota of these four different animals were very stable during the investigating period. We also found that two individuals of the same species had a very similar bacterial compositions in their GI tracts at different time point. This finding indicated that the bacterial compositions of GI tract in the four animals were affected mostly by the host phylogeny and their feeding habits. Moreover, according to bacterial 16S rDNA sequencing and idencification, results show that the Firmicutes were the dominant bacterial phyum in all four animals GI tracts, the amount of Bacteroides was much less than Firmicutes. This result might caused by the highly starch content in their feed. Large amount of carbohydrate-degrading, protein-degrading, lipid-degrading bacteria were found in all of these different animals. Fiber-degrading bacteria Fibrobacteres were identified in the GI tracts of the herbivores and omnivore, but not the carnivore, showing that GI tract microbiota plays an important role to provide nutrient and assist energy to the host.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0726111-141617
Date26 July 2011
CreatorsTsao, Fu-jui
ContributorsJimmy C. M. Kao, Jong-Kang Liu, Chi-Hsin Hsu
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0726111-141617
Rightswithheld, Copyright information available at source archive

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