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Distributions of Bacterial Generalists among the Guts of Birds, Fish, and Mammals - abstract
Citation:
Green, H., J. Fisher, S. McLellan, M. Sogin, AND O. Shanks. Distributions of Bacterial Generalists among the Guts of Birds, Fish, and Mammals - abstract. Presented at International Symposium on Microbial Ecology, Montreal, CANADA, August 21 - 26, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
Complex distributions of bacterial taxa within diverse animal microbiomes have inspired ecological and biogeographical approaches to revealing the functions of taxa that may be most important for host health. Of particular interest are bacteria that find many diverse habitats suitable for growth and remain competitive amongst finely-tuned host specialists. While previous work has focused on identifying these specialists, here our aims were to 1) identify generalist taxa, 2) identify taxonomic clades with enriched generalist diversity, and 3) describe the distribution of the largest generalist groups among hosts. We analyzed existing bacterial rRNA tag-sequencing data (v6) available on VAMPs (vamps.mbl.edu) from the microbiomes of 12 host species (106 samples total) spanning birds, mammals, and fish for generalist taxa using the CLAM test. OTUs with approximately equal abundance and a minimum of 10 reads in two hosts were classified as generalists. Generalist OTUs (n=2,982) were found in all hosts tested. Bacterial families Alcaligenaceae and Burkholderiaceae were significantly enriched with generalists OTUs compared to other families. Bacterial families such as Bacteroidaceae and Lachnospiraceae significantly lacked generalists OTUs compared to other families. Enterobacteriaceae, Peptostreptococcaceae, and Erysipelotrichaceae more so than other bacterial families were widely distributed and abundant in birds, mammals, and fish suggesting that these taxa maintain strategies for growth and reproduction in a wide range of intestinal habitats. Our findings provide one perspective on the ecological roles of uncultivated bacteria in diverse gut environments and highlight particular clades that could be prioritized for cultivation or physiological studies.