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Gut Microbiota of Migrating Wild Rabbit Fish (Siganus guttatus) Larvae Have Low Spatial and Temporal Variability

  • Microbiology of Aquatic Systems
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Abstract

We investigated the gut microbiota of rabbit fish larvae at three locations in Vietnam (ThuanAn—northern, QuangNam—intermediate, BinhDinh—southern sampling site) over a three-year period. In the wild, the first food for rabbit fish larvae remains unknown, while the juveniles and adults are herbivores, forming schools near the coasts, lagoons, and river mouths, and feeding mainly on filamentous algae. This is the first study on the gut microbiota of the wild fish larvae and with a large number of individuals analyzed spatially and temporally. The Clostridiales order was the most predominant in the gut, and location-by-location alpha diversity showed significant differences in Chao-1, Hill number 1, and evenness. Analysis of beta diversity indicated that the location, not year, had an effect on the composition of the microbiota. In 2014, the gut microbiota of fish from QuangNam was different from that in BinhDinh; in 2015, the gut microbiota was different for all locations; and, in 2016, the gut microbiota in ThuanAn was different from that in the other locations. There was a time-dependent trend in the north–south axis for the gut microbiota, which is considered to be tentative awaiting larger datasets. We found limited variation in the gut microbiota geographically and in time and strong indications for a core microbiome. Five and fifteen OTUs were found in 100 and 99% of the individuals, respectively. This suggests that at this life stage the gut microbiota is under strong selection due to a combination of fish–microbe and microbe–microbe interactions.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially granted by the Flemish Interuniversity Council Project (VLIR-IUC; grant number: ZIUS2015AP026) between Ghent University, Belgium, and Hue University, Vietnam. Jo De Vrieze is supported as postdoctoral fellow from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Aquaculture & Artemia Reference Center, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Duy Le, Dung Nguyen, Kristof Dierckens & Peter Bossier

  2. Faculty of Fisheries, Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry, Hue University, Hue City, Vietnam

    Duy Le & Phuoc Nguyen

  3. Center for Microbial Ecology and Technology (CMET), Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Nico Boon, Tim Lacoere, Frederiek-Maarten Kerckhof & Jo De Vrieze

  4. Department of Biotechnology and Food Science, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Olav Vadstein

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  1. Duy Le
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  2. Phuoc Nguyen
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  3. Dung Nguyen
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All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. All procedures performed in studies involving animals were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institution or practice at which the studies were conducted.

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Supplement Fig. 1. Heat map showing the square root-transformed relative abundance of the gut microbiome of the rabbit fish larvae from 3 locations over 3 years at OTU levels. Weighted averages of the replicates are presented (PNG 114 kb)

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Le, D., Nguyen, P., Nguyen, D. et al. Gut Microbiota of Migrating Wild Rabbit Fish (Siganus guttatus) Larvae Have Low Spatial and Temporal Variability. Microb Ecol 79, 539–551 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-019-01436-1

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