Gut microbial ecology of lizards: insights into diversity in the wild, effects of captivity, variation across gut regions and transmission

KOHL, KEVIN D.; BRUN, ANTONIO; MAGALLANES, MELISA; BRINKERHOFF, JOSHUA; LASPIUR, ALEJANDRO; ACOSTA, JUAN CARLOS; CAVIEDES VIDAL, ENRIQUE; BORDENSTEIN, SETH R.

MOLECULAR ECOLOGY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Año: 2017 vol. 26 p. 1175 - 1189

0962-1083

Animals maintain complex associations with a diverse microbiota living in their guts.Our understanding of the ecology of these associations is extremely limited in reptiles.Here, we report an in-depth study into the microbial ecology of gut communities inthree syntopic and viviparous lizard species (two omnivores: Liolaemus parvus andLiolaemus ruibali and an herbivore: Phymaturus williamsi). Using 16S rRNA genesequencing to inventory various bacterial communities, we elucidate four major findings:(i) closely related lizard species harbour distinct gut bacterial microbiota thatremain distinguishable in captivity; a considerable portion of gut bacterial diversity(39.1%) in nature overlap with that found on plant material, (ii) captivity changes bacterialcommunity composition, although host-specific communities are retained, (iii)faecal samples are largely representative of the hindgut bacterial community and thusrepresent acceptable sources for nondestructive sampling, and (iv) lizards born in captivityand separated from their mothers within 24 h shared 34.3% of their gut bacterialdiversity with their mothers, suggestive of maternal or environmental transmission.Each of these findings represents the first time such a topic has been investigated inlizard hosts. Taken together, our findings provide a foundation for comparative analysesof the faecal and gastrointestinal microbiota of reptile hosts