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Bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in Arctic Svalbard
BACKGROUND: Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are major predators in the Arctic marine ecosystem, feeding mainly on seals, and living closely associated with sea ice. Little is known of their gut microbial ecology and the main purpose of this study was to investigate the microbial diversity in faeces of...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2010
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2822771/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20074323 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-10-10 |
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author | Glad, Trine Bernhardsen, Pål Nielsen, Kaare M Brusetti, Lorenzo Andersen, Magnus Aars, Jon Sundset, Monica A |
author_facet | Glad, Trine Bernhardsen, Pål Nielsen, Kaare M Brusetti, Lorenzo Andersen, Magnus Aars, Jon Sundset, Monica A |
author_sort | Glad, Trine |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are major predators in the Arctic marine ecosystem, feeding mainly on seals, and living closely associated with sea ice. Little is known of their gut microbial ecology and the main purpose of this study was to investigate the microbial diversity in faeces of polar bears in Svalbard, Norway (74-81°N, 10-33°E). In addition the level of bla(TEM )alleles, encoding ampicillin resistance (amp(r)) were determined. In total, ten samples were collected from ten individual bears, rectum swabs from five individuals in 2004 and faeces samples from five individuals in 2006. RESULTS: A 16S rRNA gene clone library was constructed, and all sequences obtained from 161 clones showed affiliation with the phylum Firmicutes, with 160 sequences identified as Clostridiales and one sequence identified as unclassified Firmicutes. The majority of the sequences (70%) were affiliated with the genus Clostridium. Aerobic heterotrophic cell counts on chocolate agar ranged between 5.0 × 10(4 )to 1.6 × 10(6 )colony forming units (cfu)/ml for the rectum swabs and 4.0 × 10(3 )to 1.0 × 10(5 )cfu/g for the faeces samples. The proportion of amp(r )bacteria ranged from 0% to 44%. All of 144 randomly selected amp(r )isolates tested positive for enzymatic β-lactamase activity. Three % of the amp(r )isolates from the rectal samples yielded positive results when screened for the presence of bla(TEM )genes by PCR. Bla(TEM )alleles were also detected by PCR in two out of three total faecal DNA samples from polar bears. CONCLUSION: The bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bears in their natural environment in Svalbard is low compared to other animal species, with all obtained clones affiliating to Firmicutes. Furthermore, only low levels of bla(TEM )alleles were detected in contrast to their increasing prevalence in some clinical and commensal bacterial populations. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2822771 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2010 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-28227712010-02-17 Bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in Arctic Svalbard Glad, Trine Bernhardsen, Pål Nielsen, Kaare M Brusetti, Lorenzo Andersen, Magnus Aars, Jon Sundset, Monica A BMC Microbiol Research article BACKGROUND: Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are major predators in the Arctic marine ecosystem, feeding mainly on seals, and living closely associated with sea ice. Little is known of their gut microbial ecology and the main purpose of this study was to investigate the microbial diversity in faeces of polar bears in Svalbard, Norway (74-81°N, 10-33°E). In addition the level of bla(TEM )alleles, encoding ampicillin resistance (amp(r)) were determined. In total, ten samples were collected from ten individual bears, rectum swabs from five individuals in 2004 and faeces samples from five individuals in 2006. RESULTS: A 16S rRNA gene clone library was constructed, and all sequences obtained from 161 clones showed affiliation with the phylum Firmicutes, with 160 sequences identified as Clostridiales and one sequence identified as unclassified Firmicutes. The majority of the sequences (70%) were affiliated with the genus Clostridium. Aerobic heterotrophic cell counts on chocolate agar ranged between 5.0 × 10(4 )to 1.6 × 10(6 )colony forming units (cfu)/ml for the rectum swabs and 4.0 × 10(3 )to 1.0 × 10(5 )cfu/g for the faeces samples. The proportion of amp(r )bacteria ranged from 0% to 44%. All of 144 randomly selected amp(r )isolates tested positive for enzymatic β-lactamase activity. Three % of the amp(r )isolates from the rectal samples yielded positive results when screened for the presence of bla(TEM )genes by PCR. Bla(TEM )alleles were also detected by PCR in two out of three total faecal DNA samples from polar bears. CONCLUSION: The bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bears in their natural environment in Svalbard is low compared to other animal species, with all obtained clones affiliating to Firmicutes. Furthermore, only low levels of bla(TEM )alleles were detected in contrast to their increasing prevalence in some clinical and commensal bacterial populations. BioMed Central 2010-01-14 /pmc/articles/PMC2822771/ /pubmed/20074323 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-10-10 Text en Copyright ©2010 Glad et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research article Glad, Trine Bernhardsen, Pål Nielsen, Kaare M Brusetti, Lorenzo Andersen, Magnus Aars, Jon Sundset, Monica A Bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in Arctic Svalbard |
title | Bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in Arctic Svalbard |
title_full | Bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in Arctic Svalbard |
title_fullStr | Bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in Arctic Svalbard |
title_full_unstemmed | Bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in Arctic Svalbard |
title_short | Bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in Arctic Svalbard |
title_sort | bacterial diversity in faeces from polar bear (ursus maritimus) in arctic svalbard |
topic | Research article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2822771/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20074323 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-10-10 |
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