A Faithful Gut: Core Features of Gastrointestinal Microbiota of Long-Distance Migratory Bats Remain Stable despite Dietary Shifts Driving Differences in Specific Bacterial Taxa

Luis Víquez-R, Kelly Speer, Kerstin Wilhelm, Nancy Simmons, Rodrigo A. Medellín, Simone Sommer, Marco Tschapka

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Migratory animals live in a world of constant change. Animals undergo many physiological changes preparing themselves for the migration. Although this field has been studied extensively over the last decades, we know relatively little about the seasonal changes that occur in the microbial communities that these animals carry in their guts. Here, we assessed the V4 region of the 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing data as a proxy to estimate microbiome diversity of tequila bats from fecal pellets and evaluate how the natural process of migration shapes the microbiome composition and diversity. We collected samples from individual bats at two localities in the dry forest biome (Chamela and Coquimatlán) and one site at the endpoint of the migration in the Sonoran Desert (Pinacate). We found that the gut microbiome of the tequila bats is dominated largely by Firmicutes and Proteobacteria. Our data also provide insights on how microbiome diversity shifts at the same site in consecutive years. Our study has demonstrated that both locality and year-to-year variation contribute to shaping the composition, overall diversity, and "uniqueness"of the gut microbiome of migratory nectar-feeding female bats, with localities from the dry forest biome looking more like each other compared to those from the desert biome. In terms of beta diversity, our data show a stratified effect in which the samples' locality was the strongest factor influencing the gut microbiome but with significant variation between consecutive years at the same locality.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbere01525-21
JournalMicrobiology spectrum
Volume9
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • 16S RNA
  • Chiroptera
  • Gut microbiome
  • Migration
  • Phyllostomidae

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physiology
  • Ecology
  • General Immunology and Microbiology
  • Genetics
  • Microbiology (medical)
  • Cell Biology
  • Infectious Diseases

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