Preliminary Study on the Characteristics of Gut Microbiota for Captive Asian Elephants in Yunnan
To explore the gut microbiota composition of Asian elephants in Yunnan and the effect of different captive feeding methods on their gut microbiota,this study was conducted from September to November 2022.Feces of five Asian elephant were collected from Kunming Yuantongshan Zoo(using captive and pure artificial feeding methods,n=2)and Meng'a Town Management Station in Menghai county,Xishuangbanna prefecture(using natural captive feeding methods with occasional artificial feeding,n=3),and after extracting DNA,sequencing and analysis were performed using 16S rDNA V3-V4 region amplicons.The results showed that a total of 611 857 valid sequences were obtained from Asian elephant fecal samples,and clustering generated 2 485 operational taxonomic units(OTUs),belonging to 20 phyla and 173 genera.Firmicutes and Bacte-roidetes were the dominant phyla in all Asian elephant fecal samples,while Trichospiridae,Ruminococcaceae,F082,and Rikenellaceae were the dominant bacterial families.The analysis results of Ace index(t=4.831,P=0.021)and Chao1 in-dex(t=3.96,P=0.32)showed that the abundance of fecal microbiota in the Asian elephant in Menghai was significantly higher than that in the Yuantongshan group(P＜0.05).The fecal microbiota structure and function of Asian elephants living in different regions were different.In summary,there were certain similarities and significant differences in the gut mi-crobiota of Asian elephants between the regions.It indicated that different living environments can lead to differences in the gut microbiota of Asian elephants,and the wild mode of captive feeding can enrich the gut microbiota of Asian elephants.
万方数据
维普
