Seasonal Variation and Sexual Dimorphism of the Microbiota in Wild Blue Sheep (Pseudois nayaur)

Zhaoling Zhu; Yewen Sun; Feng Zhu; Zhensheng Liu; Ruliang Pan; Liwei Teng; Songtao Guo

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.01260

Seasonal Variation and Sexual Dimorphism of the Microbiota in Wild Blue Sheep (Pseudois nayaur)

Front Microbiol. 2020 Jun 26:11:1260. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.01260. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Zhaoling Zhu^{1

2}, Yewen Sun³, Feng Zhu³, Zhensheng Liu¹, Ruliang Pan^{3

4

5}, Liwei Teng¹, Songtao Guo³

Affiliations

¹ College of Wildlife and Protected Area, Key Laboratory of Conservation Biology, State Forestry Administration, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China.
² College of Economics and Management, Jiamusi University, Jiamusi, China.
³ Shaanxi Key Laboratory for Animal Conservation, Northwest University, Xi'an, China.
⁴ School of Human Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, United States.
⁵ International Centre of Biodiversity and Primate Conservation, Dali University, Dali, China.

Abstract

Microbiota of the wild blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur) presents a seasonal variation due to different dietary selection and feeding strategies from different ecological niches chosen by different sex in summer. To address those issues, we analyzed the variation of gut microbiota based on the material from the feces, with 16S rRNA and meta-genome aimed to explore seasonal and gender differences. The results indicate that seasonal dietary changes and gender differentiation, as expected, cause the variation in sheep's gut microbiota structure. The variation of the former is more significant than the latter. Dominant Firmicutes exists a significantly higher abundance in summer than that in winter. Subordinate Bacteroides expresses no seasonal difference between the two seasons. Compared with the winter group, the summer group is featured by abundant enzymes digesting cellulose and generating short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), such as beta-glucosidase (EC: 3.2.1.21) for cellulose digestion, and butyrate kinase (EC:2.7.2.7) in butyrate metabolism, implying that the changes of the composition in intestinal flora allow the sheep to adapt to the seasonalized dietary selection through alternated microbial functions to reach the goal of facilitating the efficiency of energy harvesting. The results also show that the blue sheep expresses a prominent sexual dimorphism in the components of gut microbiota, indicating that the two sexes have different adaptations to the dietary selection, and demands for physical and psychological purposes. Thus, this study provides an example of demonstrating the principles and regulations of natural selection and environmental adaptation.

Keywords: aggregation; gut microbiota; seasonal and sexual variations; short-chain fatty acids; wild blue sheep.