Investigation into the fungal diversity within different regions of the gastrointestinal tract of Panaque nigrolineatus, a wood-eating fish.

ABSTRACT: The Amazonian catfish, Panaque nigrolineatus have several physiological adaptions enabling the scraping and consumption of wood (xylivory), facilitating a detritivorous dietary strategy. Composed of lignocellulose, wood is a difficult substrate to degrade and as yet, it is unclear whether the fish obtains any direct nutritional benefits from wood ingestion and degradation. However, there are numerous systems that rely on microbial symbioses to provide energy and other nutritional benefits for host organisms via lignocellulose decomposition. While previous studies on the microbial community of P. nigrolineatus have focused upon the bacterial population, the role of fungi in lignocellulose degradation in the fish has not yet been examined. This study describes the detection of

SUBMITTER: Marden CL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5687512 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature