Assessing the validity of fecal sampling for characterizing variation in threespine stickleback's gut microbiota.

ABSTRACT: The gut microbiota is crucial for many aspects of their hosts' biology, and it has been characterized for many species across the animal kingdom. Yet, we still don't have a good understanding of whether non-lethal sampling can accurately capture the diversity of gut-associated bacterial communities, as estimated from lethal sampling of intestinal tissue. We further lack knowledge on whether non-lethal sampling methods are suitable for detecting gut microbiota shifts associated with changes in environmental factors (e.g., diet). We addressed these questions in threespine stickleback fish, a model system for evolutionary ecology, by comparing bacterial communities from intestinal tissue and feces. Despite some differences in community composition between the two sample types and considerable

SUBMITTER: Harer A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10513271 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature