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Dynamics of Bacterial Communities on Eggshells and on Nest Materials During Incubation in the Oriental Tit (Parus minor)

  • Environmental Microbiology
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Abstract

Eggshell bacterial communities may affect hatching success and nestling’s condition. Nest materials are in direct contact with the eggshells, but the relationships with the eggshell microbiome during incubation have not been fully elucidated. Here, we characterize eggshell and nest material bacterial communities and their changes during incubation in the Oriental Tit (Parus minor). Bacterial communities on the nest material were relatively stable and remained distinct from the eggshell communities and had higher diversity and greater phylogenetic clustering than the eggshell communities from the same nest, resulting in lower phylogenetic turnover rate of nest material microbiome during incubation than expected by chance. While the species diversity of both communities did not change during incubation, we found significantly greater changes in the structure of bacterial communities on the eggshell than on the nest material. However, eggshell microbiome remained distinct from nest material microbiome, suggesting independent dynamics of the two microbiomes during incubation. We detected an increase in the relative abundance of several bacterial taxa on the eggshell that likely come from the bird’s skin, feathers, cloaca/intestine, or uropygial secretion which suggests some exchange of bacteria between the incubating bird and the eggshell. Furthermore, incubation appeared to promote the abundance of antibiotic producing taxa on the eggshell, which may hypothetically inhibit growth of many bacteria including pathogenic ones. Our results suggest that the future studies should focus on simultaneous monitoring of absolute abundance as well as relative abundance in communities on eggshells, nest materials, and the incubating bird’s body.

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Data Availability

Raw fastq sequence files were uploaded to NCBI SRA (sequence read archive) under project ID of PRJNA629431.

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Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ms. Yeojoo Yoon for her assistance in field sampling.

Funding

This work was supported by National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) via grants 3344–20180017 and 2–2019-1273–001-3, by DGIST Start-up Fund Program of the Ministry of Science and ICT via grant 2021010026, and by the BK Korea 21 (Grant number: 5253–20180100/21A20131212006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, 08826, Seoul, South Korea

    Hokyung Song, Keesan Lee, Injae Hwang, Eunjeong Yang, Jungmoon Ha, Woojoo Kim & Piotr Jablonski

  2. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

    Hokyung Song

  3. Division of Life Sciences, Korea Polar Research Institute, 26 Songdomirae-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, 21990, South Korea

    Hokyung Song & Hyunjoon Cho

  4. Office of Planning & Strategy, College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, 08826, Seoul, South Korea

    Sungjin Park

  5. Seoul National University Forests, Taehwasan, 572 Docheogwit-ro, Docheok-myeon, Gwangju-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

    Sungjin Park

  6. Interdisciplinary Program of EcoCreative, Ewha Womans University, 52 Ewhayeodae-gil, Seodaemun-gu, 03760, Seoul, South Korea

    Jae Chun Choe

  7. Department of New Biology, DGIST, 333 Techno Jungang-daero, 42988, Daegu, South Korea

    Sang-im Lee

  8. Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Wilcza 64, 00-679, Warsaw, Poland

    Piotr Jablonski

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  1. Hokyung Song
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Contributions

Hokyung Song: Conceptualization; Investigation; Formal analysis; Writing, original draft; Visualization; Funding acquisition. Keesan Lee, Injae Hwang, Eunjeong Yang, Jungmoon Ha, and Woojoo Kim: Investigation (nest monitoring and sample collection). Sungjin Park: Investigation (nest monitoring); Writing, review and editing. Hyunjoon Cho: Formal analysis. Sang-im Lee, Jae Chun Choe, and Piotr Jablonski: Conceptualization; Investigation; Writing, review and editing; Funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Sang-im Lee or Piotr Jablonski.

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This research was conducted following national and international guidelines. The methods used in this study were reviewed and approved by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Seoul National University (No. SNU-180727–1).

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Song, H., Lee, K., Hwang, I. et al. Dynamics of Bacterial Communities on Eggshells and on Nest Materials During Incubation in the Oriental Tit (Parus minor). Microb Ecol 85, 429–440 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-021-01927-0

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