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Coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird

Coprophagy is a behavior where animals consume feces, and has been observed across a wide range of species, including birds and mammals. The phenomenon is particularly prevalent in juveniles, but the reasons for this remain unclear. One hypothesis is that coprophagy enables offspring to acquire bene...

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Autores principales: Videvall, Elin, Bensch, Hanna M, Engelbrecht, Anel, Cloete, Schalk, Cornwallis, Charlie K
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10355177/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37475750
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad021
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author Videvall, Elin
Bensch, Hanna M
Engelbrecht, Anel
Cloete, Schalk
Cornwallis, Charlie K
author_facet Videvall, Elin
Bensch, Hanna M
Engelbrecht, Anel
Cloete, Schalk
Cornwallis, Charlie K
author_sort Videvall, Elin
collection PubMed
description Coprophagy is a behavior where animals consume feces, and has been observed across a wide range of species, including birds and mammals. The phenomenon is particularly prevalent in juveniles, but the reasons for this remain unclear. One hypothesis is that coprophagy enables offspring to acquire beneficial gut microbes that aid development. However, despite the potential importance of this behavior, studies investigating the effects in juveniles are rare. Here we experimentally test this idea by examining how ingestion of adult feces by ostrich chicks affects their gut microbiota development, growth, feeding behavior, pathogen abundance, and mortality. We conducted extensive longitudinal experiments for 8 weeks, repeated over 2 years. It involved 240 chicks, of which 128 were provided daily access to fresh fecal material from adults and 112 were simultaneously given a control treatment. Repeated measures, behavioral observations, and DNA metabarcoding of the microbial gut community, both prior to and over the course of the experiment, allowed us to evaluate multiple aspects of the behavior. The results show that coprophagy causes (a) marked shifts to the juvenile gut microbiota, including a major increase in diversity and rapid maturation of the microbial composition, (b) higher growth rates (fecal-supplemented chicks became 9.4% heavier at 8 weeks old), (c) changes to overall feeding behavior but no differences in feed intake, (d) lower abundance of a common gut pathogen (Clostridium colinum), and (e) lower mortality associated with gut disease. Together, our results suggest that the behavior of coprophagy in juveniles is highly beneficial and may have evolved to accelerate the development of gut microbiota.
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spelling pubmed-103551772023-07-20 Coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird Videvall, Elin Bensch, Hanna M Engelbrecht, Anel Cloete, Schalk Cornwallis, Charlie K Evol Lett Letters Coprophagy is a behavior where animals consume feces, and has been observed across a wide range of species, including birds and mammals. The phenomenon is particularly prevalent in juveniles, but the reasons for this remain unclear. One hypothesis is that coprophagy enables offspring to acquire beneficial gut microbes that aid development. However, despite the potential importance of this behavior, studies investigating the effects in juveniles are rare. Here we experimentally test this idea by examining how ingestion of adult feces by ostrich chicks affects their gut microbiota development, growth, feeding behavior, pathogen abundance, and mortality. We conducted extensive longitudinal experiments for 8 weeks, repeated over 2 years. It involved 240 chicks, of which 128 were provided daily access to fresh fecal material from adults and 112 were simultaneously given a control treatment. Repeated measures, behavioral observations, and DNA metabarcoding of the microbial gut community, both prior to and over the course of the experiment, allowed us to evaluate multiple aspects of the behavior. The results show that coprophagy causes (a) marked shifts to the juvenile gut microbiota, including a major increase in diversity and rapid maturation of the microbial composition, (b) higher growth rates (fecal-supplemented chicks became 9.4% heavier at 8 weeks old), (c) changes to overall feeding behavior but no differences in feed intake, (d) lower abundance of a common gut pathogen (Clostridium colinum), and (e) lower mortality associated with gut disease. Together, our results suggest that the behavior of coprophagy in juveniles is highly beneficial and may have evolved to accelerate the development of gut microbiota. Oxford University Press 2023-06-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10355177/ /pubmed/37475750 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad021 Text en © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) and European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEN). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Letters
Videvall, Elin
Bensch, Hanna M
Engelbrecht, Anel
Cloete, Schalk
Cornwallis, Charlie K
Coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird
title Coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird
title_full Coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird
title_fullStr Coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird
title_full_unstemmed Coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird
title_short Coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird
title_sort coprophagy rapidly matures juvenile gut microbiota in a precocial bird
topic Letters
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10355177/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37475750
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad021
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