Microbes within the gut help with digestion, metabolism and
defending against pathogens. Fish are no
exceptions when it comes to gut microbiomes however compared to humans,
ruminants and arthropods they are relatively understudied. In other organism’s stress has been shown to
change gut microbial composition so Zha et al. (2018) set out to look at
the changes in Eurasian perch, when predators are present and when food is scares.
Fish were given varying quantities of food and were separated
into tanks with the presence of predator behind a barrier or without. The V4 region of the 16S rRNA was amplified
from the entire intestine using PCR then sequenced and grouped into OUT’s of
>97% similarity.
The presence of pike did not affect most of the microbes
found but instead food stress was the important factor. The microbes showing the most difference are Tenericutes
and Fusobacteria with an increase and decrease respectively as food
levels increase. This suggests that Fusobacteria may be used as an
indicator for individuals under stress as they have significantly lower levels.
Further studies could look at the effect
that Fusobacteria has on the individual and why levels decrease in times
of food stress.
Zha, Y., Eiler, S., Johansson, F., Svanbak, R. (2018).
Effects of predation stress and food ration on perch gut microbiota. Microbiome,
6.
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