Bats are natural reservoirs for many emerging viral diseases. That is why their virome is widely studied. But at the same time, studies of their bacterial gut microbiota are limited, creating a ...degree of uncertainty about the role of bats in global microbial ecology. In this study, we analyzed gut microbiota of insectivorous
and
from rehabilitation centers from Rostov-on-Don and Moscow, respectively, and fructivorous
from the Moscow Zoo based on V3-V4 16S rRNA metagenomic sequencing. We revealed that microbial diversity significantly differs between the insectivorous and fructivorous species studied, while the differences between
and
are less pronounced, which shows that bats' gut microbiota is not strictly species-specific and depends more on diet type. In the gut microbiota of synanthropic bats, we observed bacteria that are important for public health and animal welfare such as
,
,
,
,
,
, and
, as well as some lactic acid bacteria such as
,
,
, and
. All these bacteria, except for
and
were significantly less abundant in
. This study provides a direct metagenomic comparison of synanthropic insectivorous and zoo fructivorous bats, suggesting future directions for studying these animals' role in microbial ecology.
Dolphins are aquatic mammals, whose role in microbial ecology is not fully understood. It is critical to study the microbiota of dolphins kept in captivity, as close contact with humans could ...unpredictably affect both human and animal health. In this study, we investigated the gut microbiota of 15 captive common bottlenose dolphins, and the relationship of microbial diversity and composition with animals’ age, sex, birthplace (dolphinarium or wildlife), and direct contacts with dolphinarium visitors using high-throughput V3-V4 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. Based on acquired sequencing data we calculated and compared alpha and beta diversity indexes, as well as conducted differential abundance analysis of identified bacterial taxa to find multivariable associations with dolphins’ age period, sex, birthplace, and type of contact with humans with linear models. There was no association between gut microbiota composition and diversity and dolphins’ age period, sex, and birthplace. However, there were significant differences ( q -value ≤ 0.00018) in the relative abundance of Edwardsiella genus in dolphins that were in contact only with dolphinarium staff in comparison to dolphins that apart from dolphinarium staff also had contact with dolphinarium visitors. These results show that dolphins born in wildlife and dolphinariums do not have significant differences in gut microbiota composition and the microbiota of captive dolphins can be affected by their contact with humans.
