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Zhang B, Xiao J, Liu H, Zhai D, Wang Y, Liu S, Xiong F, Xia M. Vertical habitat preferences shape the fish gut microbiota in a shallow lake. Front Microbiol 2024; 15:1341303. [PMID: 38572242 PMCID: PMC10987288 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1341303] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/21/2023] [Accepted: 03/06/2024] [Indexed: 04/05/2024] Open
Abstract
Understanding the interactions between fish gut microbiota and the aquatic environment is a key issue for understanding aquatic microorganisms. Environmental microorganisms enter fish intestines through feeding, and the amount of invasion varies due to different feeding habits. Traditional fish feeding habitat preferences are determined by fish morphology or behavior. However, little is known about how the feeding behavior of fish relative to the vertical structure in a shallow lake influences gut microbiota. In our study, we used nitrogen isotopes to measure the trophic levels of fish. Then high-throughput sequencing was used to describe the composition of environmental microbiota and fish gut microbiota, and FEAST (fast expectation-maximization for microbial source tracking) method was used to trace the source of fish gut microbiota. We investigated the microbial diversity of fish guts and their habitats in Lake Sanjiao and verified that the sediments indeed played an important role in the assembly of fish gut microbiota. Then, the FEAST analysis indicated that microbiota in water and sediments acted as the primary sources in half of the fish gut microbiota respectively. Furthermore, we classified the vertical habitat preferences using microbial data and significant differences in both composition and function of fish gut microbiota were observed between groups with distinct habitat preferences. The performance of supervised and unsupervised machine learning in classifying fish gut microbiota by habitat preferences actually exceeded classification by fish species taxonomy and fish trophic level. Finally, we described the stability of fish co-occurrence networks with different habitat preferences. Interestingly, the co-occurrence network seemed more stable in pelagic fish than in benthic fish. Our results show that the preferences of fish in the vertical structure of habitat was the main factor affecting their gut microbiota. We advocated the use of microbial interactions between fish gut and their surrounding environment to reflect fish preferences in vertical habitat structure. This approach not only offers a novel perspective for understanding the interactions between fish gut microbiota and environmental factors, but also provides new methods and ideas for studying fish habitat selection in aquatic ecosystems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bowei Zhang
- Hubei Engineering Research Center for Protection and Utilization of Special Biological Resources in the Hanjiang River Basin, School of Life Sciences, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Environmental and Health Effects of Persistent Toxic Substances, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Jiaman Xiao
- Hubei Engineering Research Center for Protection and Utilization of Special Biological Resources in the Hanjiang River Basin, School of Life Sciences, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Environmental and Health Effects of Persistent Toxic Substances, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Hongyan Liu
- Hubei Engineering Research Center for Protection and Utilization of Special Biological Resources in the Hanjiang River Basin, School of Life Sciences, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Environmental and Health Effects of Persistent Toxic Substances, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Dongdong Zhai
- Hubei Engineering Research Center for Protection and Utilization of Special Biological Resources in the Hanjiang River Basin, School of Life Sciences, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Environmental and Health Effects of Persistent Toxic Substances, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Ying Wang
- Hubei Engineering Research Center for Protection and Utilization of Special Biological Resources in the Hanjiang River Basin, School of Life Sciences, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Environmental and Health Effects of Persistent Toxic Substances, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Shujun Liu
- Hubei Engineering Research Center for Protection and Utilization of Special Biological Resources in the Hanjiang River Basin, School of Life Sciences, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Environmental and Health Effects of Persistent Toxic Substances, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Fei Xiong
- Hubei Engineering Research Center for Protection and Utilization of Special Biological Resources in the Hanjiang River Basin, School of Life Sciences, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Environmental and Health Effects of Persistent Toxic Substances, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Ming Xia
- Hubei Engineering Research Center for Protection and Utilization of Special Biological Resources in the Hanjiang River Basin, School of Life Sciences, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Environmental and Health Effects of Persistent Toxic Substances, Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
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Endo C. Feeding selectivity and a functional trade-off in a benthic fish with a continuous morphological variation: an experimental test. BMC ZOOL 2024; 9:5. [PMID: 38439035 PMCID: PMC10910733 DOI: 10.1186/s40850-024-00194-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/30/2023] [Accepted: 01/29/2024] [Indexed: 03/06/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Functional trade-offs through ecological specializations are hypothesized to become causes of adaptive phenotypic divergence under divergent natural selection, where intermediate phenotypes may have the lowest fitness. Evidence of phenotypic divergence in a trade-off between populations experiencing different environmental/ecological conditions is abundant. However, traits in divergent selection sometimes present non-discrete (unimodal) variability, including intermediate phenotypes, although the underlying mechanisms are poorly documented. A benthic cyprinid fish, Pseudogobio esocinus, in Lake Biwa, central Japan, exhibits a large non-discrete/continuous variation in mouthpart morphology (from wide to narrow) within a lake population. The variation is linked with individual diets (i.e., the compositions of two different types of prey) even at a single site, and thus the variability is hypothesized to persist under divergent selection for prey usage. As a first step toward understanding the persistence mechanisms, here I examined the presence of morphology-dependent feeding selectivity and a functional trade-off in a laboratory experiment. RESULTS When each experimental fish was simultaneously provided the different types of prey (chironomid larvae and amphipods), the fish mostly utilized chironomid larvae as primary prey. However, compared with the wider-mouthed fish, the narrower-mouthed fish took a larger proportion of amphipods as secondary prey by changing feeding (attacking) behavior. The intermediate-mouthed fish had lower feeding efficiency than the extreme-mouthed fish, indicating potential disadvantage of the intermediate phenotype. CONCLUSIONS This experimental result supports the presence of morphology-dependent feeding performance and a functional trade-off with potential impacts on trait variability, which may favor specializations rather than generalizations. In the wild, however, there may be some situations for relaxing the trade-off, such as temporally fluctuating prey availability that could also favor generalizations depending on the conditions, and thus, both extreme and intermediate phenotypes may persist/coexist in a single habitat. Although further examinations, especially focusing on feeding efficiency for each prey type separated from the effects of prey selectivity, are needed, this case represents an opportunity to consider the possible mechanisms of the persistence of phenotypic variation that is maintained without divergence even in a trade-off.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chiharu Endo
- Laboratory of Animal Ecology, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
- Laboratory of Forest Biology, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa Oiwake-cho, Sakyo-ku, 606-8502, Kyoto, Japan.
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Goldner JT, Holland JD. Wing morphology of a damselfly exhibits local variation in response to forest fragmentation. Oecologia 2023:10.1007/s00442-023-05396-9. [PMID: 37300574 DOI: 10.1007/s00442-023-05396-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/25/2022] [Accepted: 05/29/2023] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Environmental differences can lead to morphologically different subpopulations. The scale of the mosaic of morphologies should help shed light on the nature of the mechanisms at work. Previous work has shown that jewelwing damselflies have different wing sizes in different types of habitat. Our aim was to (1) describe the relationship between damselfly wing lengths and a gradient of forest fragmentation and (2) determine the spatial scale at which these morphological differences occur. We hypothesized that local adaptation would lead to differences in wing morphology over short distances. We herein test one of the several predictions that would need to be met to support this hypothesis: that wing morphology would show spatial autocorrelation at relatively short distances. We further predicted that the wing morphology would correlate to forest fragmentation. We collected jewelwing damselflies from across Indiana, USA, in habitats across a gradient of forest fragmentation. We examined the link between forest edge density and wing length using three biologically relevant landscape sizes. We then examined the distance to which wing length variation was autocorrelated using Moran's I. We found positive linear or unimodal relationships between wing length and edge density, in both males and females, at all three landscape scales. Spatial autocorrelation in wing length indicated that variation in wing length was autocorrelated at short distances, out to 1-5 km. Our findings uphold one of the predictions stemming from the hypothesis that adaptations to local environments-habitat fragmentation here-can occur at relatively fine spatial scales.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jakob T Goldner
- Department of Entomology, Purdue University, 901 W. State Street, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA
| | - Jeffrey D Holland
- Department of Entomology, Purdue University, 901 W. State Street, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA.
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Villsen K, Corse E, Meglécz E, Archambaud‐Suard G, Vignes H, Ereskovsky AV, Chappaz R, Dubut V. DNA metabarcoding suggests adaptive seasonal variation of individual trophic traits in a critically endangered fish. Mol Ecol 2022; 31:5889-5908. [PMID: 36125278 PMCID: PMC9828795 DOI: 10.1111/mec.16698] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/05/2021] [Revised: 09/12/2022] [Accepted: 09/15/2022] [Indexed: 01/13/2023]
Abstract
Dietary studies are critical for understanding foraging strategies and have important applications in conservation and habitat management. We applied a robust metabarcoding protocol to characterize the diet of the critically endangered freshwater fish Zingel asper (the Rhone streber). We conducted modelling and simulation analyses to identify and characterize some of the drivers of individual trophic trait variation in this species. We found that population density and ontogeny had minor effects on the trophic niche of Z. asper. Instead, our results suggest that the majority of trophic niche variation was driven by seasonal variation in ecological opportunity. The total trophic niche width of Z. asper seasonally expanded to include a broader range of prey. Furthermore, null model simulations revealed that the increase of between-individual variation in autumn indicates that Z. asper become more opportunistic relative to summer and spring, rather than being associated with a seasonal specialization of individuals. Overall, our results suggest an adaptive variation of individual trophic traits in Z. asper: the species mainly consumes a few ephemeropteran taxa (Baetis fuscatus and Ecdyonurus) but seems to be capable of adapting its foraging strategy to maintain its body condition. This study illustrates how metabarcoding data obtained from faeces can be validated and combined with individual-based modelling and simulation approaches to explore inter- and intrapopulational individual trophic traits variation and to test hypotheses in the conventional analytic framework of trophic ecology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kurt Villsen
- Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, IRDAvignon Université, IMBEMarseilleFrance
| | - Emmanuel Corse
- Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, IRDAvignon Université, IMBEMarseilleFrance,Centre Universitaire de Formation et de Recherche de Mayotte (CUFR)DembeniFrance,MARBEC, University of Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRDMontpellierFrance
| | - Emese Meglécz
- Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, IRDAvignon Université, IMBEMarseilleFrance
| | | | - Hélène Vignes
- CIRAD, University of Montpellier, INRAE, Montpellier SupAgro, AGAPMontpellierFrance
| | - Alexander V. Ereskovsky
- Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, IRDAvignon Université, IMBEMarseilleFrance,St. Petersburg State UniversitySt. PetersburgRussia,Koltzov Institute of Developmental Biology of Russian Academy of SciencesMoscowRussia
| | - Rémi Chappaz
- INRAE, Aix Marseille Université, RECOVERAix‐en‐ProvenceFrance
| | - Vincent Dubut
- Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, IRDAvignon Université, IMBEMarseilleFrance
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