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Skin bacterial microbiome of a generalist Puerto Rican frog varies along elevation and land use gradients

Host-associated microbial communities are ubiquitous among animals, and serve important functions. For example, the bacterial skin microbiome of amphibians can play a role in preventing or reducing infection by the amphibian chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Evidence suggests that envi...

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Autores principales: Hughey, Myra C., Pena, Janelle A., Reyes, Roberto, Medina, Daniel, Belden, Lisa K., Burrowes, Patricia A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5580383/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28875068
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3688
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author Hughey, Myra C.
Pena, Janelle A.
Reyes, Roberto
Medina, Daniel
Belden, Lisa K.
Burrowes, Patricia A.
author_facet Hughey, Myra C.
Pena, Janelle A.
Reyes, Roberto
Medina, Daniel
Belden, Lisa K.
Burrowes, Patricia A.
author_sort Hughey, Myra C.
collection PubMed
description Host-associated microbial communities are ubiquitous among animals, and serve important functions. For example, the bacterial skin microbiome of amphibians can play a role in preventing or reducing infection by the amphibian chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Evidence suggests that environmental bacteria likely serve as a source pool for at least some of the members of the amphibian skin bacterial community, underscoring the potential for local environmental changes to disrupt microbial community source pools that could be critical to the health of host organisms. However, few studies have assessed variation in the amphibian skin microbiome along clear environmental gradients, and so we know relatively little about how local environmental conditions influence microbiome diversity. We sampled the skin bacterial communities of Coqui frogs, Eleutherodactylus coqui (N = 77), along an elevational gradient in eastern Puerto Rico (0–875 m), with transects in two land use types: intact forest (N = 4 sites) and disturbed (N = 3 sites) forest. We found that alpha diversity (as assessed by Shannon, Simpson, and Phylogenetic Diversity indices) varied across sites, but this variation was not correlated with elevation or land use. Beta diversity (community structure), on the other hand, varied with site, elevation and land use, primarily due to changes in the relative abundance of certain bacterial OTUs (∼species) within these communities. Importantly, although microbiome diversity varied, E. coqui maintained a common core microbiota across all sites. Thus, our findings suggest that environmental conditions can influence the composition of the skin microbiome of terrestrial amphibians, but that some aspects of the microbiome remain consistent despite environmental variation.
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spelling pubmed-55803832017-09-05 Skin bacterial microbiome of a generalist Puerto Rican frog varies along elevation and land use gradients Hughey, Myra C. Pena, Janelle A. Reyes, Roberto Medina, Daniel Belden, Lisa K. Burrowes, Patricia A. PeerJ Ecology Host-associated microbial communities are ubiquitous among animals, and serve important functions. For example, the bacterial skin microbiome of amphibians can play a role in preventing or reducing infection by the amphibian chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Evidence suggests that environmental bacteria likely serve as a source pool for at least some of the members of the amphibian skin bacterial community, underscoring the potential for local environmental changes to disrupt microbial community source pools that could be critical to the health of host organisms. However, few studies have assessed variation in the amphibian skin microbiome along clear environmental gradients, and so we know relatively little about how local environmental conditions influence microbiome diversity. We sampled the skin bacterial communities of Coqui frogs, Eleutherodactylus coqui (N = 77), along an elevational gradient in eastern Puerto Rico (0–875 m), with transects in two land use types: intact forest (N = 4 sites) and disturbed (N = 3 sites) forest. We found that alpha diversity (as assessed by Shannon, Simpson, and Phylogenetic Diversity indices) varied across sites, but this variation was not correlated with elevation or land use. Beta diversity (community structure), on the other hand, varied with site, elevation and land use, primarily due to changes in the relative abundance of certain bacterial OTUs (∼species) within these communities. Importantly, although microbiome diversity varied, E. coqui maintained a common core microbiota across all sites. Thus, our findings suggest that environmental conditions can influence the composition of the skin microbiome of terrestrial amphibians, but that some aspects of the microbiome remain consistent despite environmental variation. PeerJ Inc. 2017-08-29 /pmc/articles/PMC5580383/ /pubmed/28875068 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3688 Text en ©2017 Hughey et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Hughey, Myra C.
Pena, Janelle A.
Reyes, Roberto
Medina, Daniel
Belden, Lisa K.
Burrowes, Patricia A.
Skin bacterial microbiome of a generalist Puerto Rican frog varies along elevation and land use gradients
title Skin bacterial microbiome of a generalist Puerto Rican frog varies along elevation and land use gradients
title_full Skin bacterial microbiome of a generalist Puerto Rican frog varies along elevation and land use gradients
title_fullStr Skin bacterial microbiome of a generalist Puerto Rican frog varies along elevation and land use gradients
title_full_unstemmed Skin bacterial microbiome of a generalist Puerto Rican frog varies along elevation and land use gradients
title_short Skin bacterial microbiome of a generalist Puerto Rican frog varies along elevation and land use gradients
title_sort skin bacterial microbiome of a generalist puerto rican frog varies along elevation and land use gradients
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5580383/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28875068
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3688
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