The impact of different conservation strategies on the gut microbiome
and metabolome of the threatened wildlife: an observation from golden
snub-nosed monkey
Abstract
Human conservation efforts have pros and cons for endangered animals.
Metagenomic analysis of the gut microbiome provides valuable insights
and tools for wildlife conservation. However, most studies only focus on
changes in microbial species and potential functional genes, leaving out
the assembly mechanisms and metabolic activities of wildlife gut
microbiome. Herein, we investigated the gut microbiome of golden
snub-nosed monkeys under varied conservation strategies (wild, captive,
and food provision) using metagenome and metabolome analysis. We found
that the conserved monkeys had more non-redundant genes, distinct
community diversities, and less stable gut microbiota. Source-tracking
analysis showed captive group has fewer wild-sourced microbes than food
provision group. The captive group had more habitat specialists with
narrower niche breadth compared to the provision/wild counterparts.
Besides, captive group’s microbiota governed by deterministic processes
more than provisioned/wild groups. Procrustes analysis revealed changes
in antibiotic resistance genes and virulence factors linked to mobile
genetic elements in conserved monkeys. Notably, gut microbiota and
metabolomic dataset had significant co-variation and clear separation
among the wild, captive and food provision groups. Weighted correlation
network analysis identified co-varying modules of microbiota and
metabolites with opposite variation trends between the wild and
conserved animals, specifically linked to co-metabolism pathways
associated with essential amino acids. This study provides new insights
into the structural features, assembly mechanisms, community functions,
and microbiota-metabolome associations of wildlife gut microbiome under
different conservation strategies and have significant implications for
advancing sustainable conservation practices.