The Low-Diversity Fecal Microbiota of the Critically Endangered Kākāpō Is Robust to Anthropogenic Dietary and Geographic Influences
Abstract
The critically endangered kākāpō, an herbivorous parrot endemic to New Zealand, is subject to intensive management to increase its population size. Key aspects of the management program include supplementary feeding and translocation of kākāpō between different predator-free islands to optimize the genetic composition of the breeding populations. While these practices have helped boost the kākāpō population, their impact on the kākāpō fecal microbiota is uncertain. Previous studies have found that the kākāpō possesses a low-diversity fecal microbiota, typically dominated by Escherichia/Shigella spp. However, the question of whether the low diversity of the kākāpō fecal microbiota is an inadvertent consequence of human interventions has yet to be investigated. To that end, we used high-throughput Illumina sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons obtained from fecal material of 63 kākāpō representing different diets, islands, and ages. Remarkably, neither supplementary feeding nor geographic location were associated with significant differences in the overall fecal microbial community structures of adult kākāpō, suggesting that the kākāpō's low-diversity fecal microbiota is both inherent to this species and robust to these external influences.
Additional Information
© 2017 Perry, Digby and Taylor. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Received: 28 July 2017; Accepted: 05 October 2017; Published: 20 October 2017. Author Contributions: AD and MT conceived of and coordinated the study. EP performed the experiments and statistical analysis. EP, AD, and MT wrote the manuscript. Funding: This work was supported by a University of Auckland School of Biological Sciences Internal Research Fund award to MT. EP was supported by a Fulbright US Graduate Award. Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. We thank New Zealand Department of Conservation staff for providing the kākāpō samples used in this study. We also thank Brittany Belin and Shashank Gandhi for providing helpful comments on the manuscript.Attached Files
Published - fmicb-08-02033.pdf
Supplemental Material - image_1.pdf
Supplemental Material - image_2.pdf
Supplemental Material - image_3.pdf
Supplemental Material - table_1.xlsx
Supplemental Material - table_2.xlsx
Supplemental Material - table_3.xlsx
Supplemental Material - table_4.xlsx
Supplemental Material - table_5.xlsx
Supplemental Material - table_6.xlsx
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 83148
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20171113-105849777
- University of Auckland
- Fulbright Foundation
- Created
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2017-11-14Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field