Isolated faecal bacterial communities found for Weddell seal

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TitleIsolated faecal bacterial communities found for Weddell seals, Leptonychotes weddellii, at White Island, McMurdo Sound, AntarcticaAbstractThe microbial diversity of faecal communities co-existing with mega fauna is not well understood even though these faecal communities are critical for health and development. Additionally, the transfer of microbial taxa among host animals is little studied. Here, we used 16S sequences obtained from clone libraries to characterise the faecal microbiota of Weddell seals breeding in McMurdo Sound and at White Island, Antarctica. Faecal bacterial communities were dominated by four phyla; Actinobacteria (20 percent), Bacteroidetes (13 percent), Firmicutes (23 percent), and Proteobacteria (13 percent). We also used automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis to examine the dispersal of bacteria between populations of Weddell seals breeding at White Island and in McMurdo Sound. The Weddell seals at White Island are isolated by the Ross Ice Shelf from the larger population of Weddell seals breeding in McMurdo Sound. We found that the faecal bacteria communities of the seals at White Island had lower diversity and that the community composition was significantly different compared with the seals in the McMurdo Sound area. Copyright 2014, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.AcknowledgementsThanks to Charles Lee, Ian McDonald, Andreas Rueckert, and Susie Wood for advice and comments on the manuscript. Logistic support was provided through Antarctica New Zealand. Financial support was provided by the New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology through a postdoctoral fellowship for JCB (UOWX0504) and research contract UOWX0505, and from the University of Waikato Vice ChancellorÅ› research fund. This work contributes to the New Zealand Latitudinal Gradient Project (LGP) and the Evolution and Biodiversity in the Antarctic (EBA) programme and its successor Antarctic Thresholds, Resilience and Adaptation (AnT-ERA).

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1st AuthorBanks, J.AuthorBanks, J.Cary, S.Hogg, I.Year2014JournalPolar BiologyVolume37Number12Pages1857-1864DOI10.1007/s00300-014-1567-xURLhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/recor.....5b89f7076d4f17182a18568f6Keywordsrank5

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TypeArticleCitationBanks, J., Cary, S. and Hogg, I. (2014). Isolated faecal bacterial communities found for {Weddell} seals, {Leptonychotes} weddellii, at {White Island, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica}. Polar Biology, 37(12): 1857-1864 IdentifierBanks2014Relevancerank5

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