Cloacal swabs and alcohol bird specimens are good proxies for compositional analyses of gut microbial communities of Great tits (Parus major).

ABSTRACT:

Background

Comprehensive studies of wild bird microbiomes are often limited by difficulties of sample acquisition. However, widely used non-invasive cloacal swab methods and under-explored museum specimens preserved in alcohol provide promising avenues to increase our understanding of wild bird microbiomes, provided that they accurately portray natural microbial community compositions. To investigate this assertion, we used 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of Great tit (Parus major) gut microbiomes to compare 1) microbial communities obtained from dissected digestive tract regions and cloacal swabs, and 2) microbial communities obtained from freshly dissected gut regions and from samples preserved in alcohol for 2 weeks or 2 months, respectively.

Results

We found no significant

SUBMITTER: Bodawatta KH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7807456 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature