6 research outputs found

    Principal coordinate analysis of the community membership (A) and structure (B) using Jaccard and Theta YC distances, respectively.

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    <p>Green squares and yellow circles represent captive and wild red panda bacterial communities, respectively. Distances between symbols on the ordination plot reflect relative dissimilarities in community memberships or structures.</p

    Characterization of the Gut Microbiota in the Red Panda (<i>Ailurus fulgens</i>)

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    <div><p>The red panda is the only living species of the genus <i>Ailurus</i>. Like giant pandas, red pandas are also highly specialized to feed mainly on highly fibrous bamboo. Although several studies have focused on the gut microbiota in the giant panda, little is known about the gut microbiota of the red panda. In this study, we characterized the fecal microbiota from both wild (n = 16) and captive (n = 6) red pandas using a pyrosequecing based approach targeting the V1-V3 hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA gene. Distinct bacterial communities were observed between the two groups based on both membership and structure. Wild red pandas maintained significantly higher community diversity, richness and evenness than captive red pandas, the communities of which were skewed and dominated by taxa associated with Firmicutes. Phylogenetic analysis of the top 50 OTUs revealed that 10 of them were related to known cellulose degraders. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of the gut microbiota of the red panda. Our data suggest that, similar to the giant panda, the gut microbiota in the red panda might also play important roles in the digestion of bamboo.</p></div

    Comparison of community alpha diversities between the wild and captive red pandas.

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    <p>Diversity was measured by inverse Simpson (A) and Shannon index (B); Richness (C) and evenness (D) were measured by the number of observed OTUs and Shannon Evenness index, respectively. The top and bottom boundaries of each box indicate the 75<sup>th</sup> and 25<sup>th</sup> quartile valudes, respectively. The black lines within each box represent the median values. Different lowercase letters above the boxplots indicate significant differences in alpha diversities between wild and captive pandas (P<0.001, Mann Whitney test).</p

    OTUs differentially represented between wild and captive red pandas identified by linear discriminant analysis coupled with effect size (LEfSe).

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    <p>A. Histogram showing OTUs that are more abundant in wild (green color) or captive (red color) red pandas ranked by effect size. The distribution of the most differentially distributed OTUs: OTU001 (more abundant in captive red pandas) and OTU003 (more abundant in wild red pandas) were illustrated in B and C, respectively.</p
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