Jia C et al. (2022), Comparative Analysis of In Situ Eukaryotic Food...

ECB-ART-50915

Animals (Basel) 2022 Sep 05;1217:. doi: 10.3390/ani12172303.

Show Gene links Show Anatomy links

Comparative Analysis of In Situ Eukaryotic Food Sources in Three Tropical Sea Cucumber Species by Metabarcoding.

Jia C , Zhang Y , Xu Q , Sun C , Wang Y , Gao F .

???displayArticle.abstract???
In this study, the eukaryotic composition of gut contents in three tropical sea cucumber species, Stichopus monotuberculatus, S. chloronotus and Holothuria atra were surveyed and compared by metabarcoding analysis based on 18S rRNA gene V4 region. The sequences were assigned to 21.80 ± 1.07, 22.60 ± 0.68 and 22.40 ± 0.25 different phyla from the gut contents of S. monotuberculatus, S. chloronotus and H. atra, respectively, and those in sediment samples were assigned to 21.00 ± 1.67 phyla. The results of α-diversity showed that surface sediments had a greater eukaryotic diversity than gut contents, yet the guts of sea cucumbers had an enrichment effect on some microorganisms, including Diatomea and Apicomplex. A comparison of the gut eukaryotic community among the three species suggested that the feeding preference was different: S. monotuberculatus fed mainly on Diatomea and Arthropoda, and the other two species had higher Apicomplexa concentrations, which may be due to differences in the morphology of the tentacles and habitat preferences. Moreover, obvious different eukaryotic community composition in the gut contents of the three sea cucumber species and the surrounding sediments also might result from the animals' selective feeding for sediment patches. The current study filled in gaps about feeding mechanisms of tropical sea cucumbers and provided a basis for further exploring the mechanism about selective feeding and sea cucumber-sediment interaction in the future.

???displayArticle.pubmedLink??? 36078023
???displayArticle.pmcLink??? PMC9454777
???displayArticle.link??? Animals (Basel)
???displayArticle.grants??? [+]

???attribute.lit??? ???displayArticles.show???

References [+] :

Butakka, Chironomidae feeding habits in different habitats from a Neotropical floodplain: exploring patterns in aquatic food webs. 2016, Pubmed

	Figure 1. Samples and surrounding environment taken in the process of sample collection from Wuzhizhou island: (a) S. chloronotus; (b) S. monotuberculatus; (c) H. atra.
	Figure 2. Venn diagram of core OTUs among the gut contents of S. monotuberculatus (Sm), S. chloronotus (Sc), H. atra (Ha) and the surrounding sediments (Sd).
	Figure 3. The α-diversity of eukaryotic organism communities in the foregut of S. monotuberculatus (Sm), S. chloronotus (Sc), H. atra (Ha) and the surrounding sediments (Sd): (a) Shannon index; (b) Simpson index; (c) ACE estimator; (d) Chao1 estimator. The differences between groups are represented by the differences in the α-diversity index, * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01.
	Figure 4. Relative abundance of the 10 most abundant phyla of S. monotuberculatus (Sm), S. chloronotus (Sc), H. atra (Ha) and the surrounding sediments (Sd). Others indicate all reads except the top 10 phyla.
	Figure 5. Identified differentially abundant taxa between samples by t-test (p < 0.05): * p < 0.05; p < 0.01; * p < 0.001.
	Figure 6. (a) Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and (b) principal co-ordinates analysis (PCoA) plot based on weighted-unifrac distance showing the relatedness of the eukaryotic composition between the different samples. The explanations of abbreviation in figure: Sm (S. monotuberculatus); Sc (S. chloronotus); Ha (H. atra); Sd (sediment).
	Figure 7. UPGMA clustering tree at the level of phylum based on weighted-unifrac distance showing the similarity of eukaryotic composition among the different samples (a) and groups (b). The explanations of abbreviation in figure: Sm (S. monotuberculatus); Sc (S. chloronotus); Ha (H. atra); Sd (sediment).