Squid meal and shrimp hydrolysate as novel protein sources for dog food

The world’s growing pet population is raising sustainability and environmental concerns for the petfood industry. Protein-rich marine by-products might contribute to mitigating negative environmental effects, decreasing waste, and improving economic efficiency. The present study evaluated two marine by-products, squid meal and shrimp hydrolysate, as novel protein sources for dog feeding. Along with the analysis of chemical composition and antioxidant activity, palatability was evaluated by comparing a commercial diet (basal diet) and diets with the inclusion of 150 g kg−1 of squid meal or shrimp hydrolysate using 12 Beagle dogs (2.2 ± 0.03 years). Two in vivo digestibility trials were conducted with six dogs, three experimental periods (10 days each) and three dietary inclusion levels (50, 100 and 150 g kg−1) of squid meal or shrimp hydrolysate in place of the basal diet to evaluate effects of inclusion level on apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD), metabolizable energy content, fecal characteristics, metabolites, and microbiota. Both protein sources presented higher protein and methionine contents than ingredients traditionally used in dog food formulation. Shrimp hydrolysate showed higher antioxidant activity than squid meal. First approach and taste were not affected by the inclusion of protein sources, but animals showed a preference for the basal diet. Effects on nutrient intake reflected the chemical composition of diets, and fecal output and characteristics were not affected by the increasing inclusion levels of both protein sources. The higher ATTD of dry matter, most nutrients and energy of diets with the inclusion of both by-products when compared to the basal diet, suggests their potential to be included in highly digestible diets for dogs. Although not affected by the inclusion level of protein sources, when compared to the basal diet, the inclusion of squid meal decreased butyrate concentration and shrimp hydrolysate increased all volatile fatty acids, except butyrate. Fecal microbiota was not affected by squid meal inclusion, whereas inclusion levels of shrimp hydrolysate significantly affected abundances of Oscillosperaceae (UCG-005), Firmicutes and Lactobacillus. Overall, results suggest that squid meal and shrimp hydrolysate constitute novel and promising protein sources for dog food, but further research is needed to fully evaluate their functional value

Environmental DNA metabarcoding of intertidal meiofauna sheds light on its potential for habitat discovery

Benthic meiofauna is a fundamental component of food webs and nutrient exchange of marine ecosystems. However, its diversity pattern and ecology of intertidal meiofauna remain poorly understood because the studies are often constrained by morphology-based species identification. Environmental DNA metabarcoding is a powerful tool to overcome this limitation. In the present study, we assessed the intertidal meiofauna diversity and their correlations with environmental variables using eDNA metabarcoding approach with both 18S rRNA and two COI markers. The 18S rRNA marker suggested Nematoda (32.1%), Arthropoda (10.5%), and Cercozoa (8.0%) were the three most abundant phyla while COI primers show strong biased towards either Arthropoda or Nematoda and generated inconsistent results when using different reference databases. The correlation analysis showed that most examined environmental factors were strongly associated with community separation, but only salinity, the content of clay, and pheophorbide were found to be significant. The eDNA metabarcoding recovered a terrestrial nematode belonging to the genus Acrobeloides in a marine-related environment. Further resampling and laboratory experiments confirmed this species is tolerant to high salinity concentrations, suggesting eDNA metabarcoding recovery is consistent with the laboratory experiment. This result demonstrated eDNA metabarcoding can be a promising tool for high-throughput new habitat discovery in meiofauna

Host specific adaptations of Ligilactobacillus aviarius to poultry

The genus Ligilactobacillus encompasses species adapted to vertebrate hosts and fermented food. Their genomes encode adaptations to the host lifestyle. Reports of gut microbiota from chicken and turkey gastrointestinal tract have shown a high persistence of Ligilactobacillus aviarius along the digestive system compared to other species found in the same host. However, its adaptations to poultry as a host has not yet been described. In this work, the pan-genome of Ligilactobacillus aviarius was explored to describe the functional adaptability to the gastrointestinal environment. The core genome is composed of 1179 gene clusters that are present at least in one copy that codifies to structural, ribosomal and biogenesis proteins. The rest of the identified regions were classified into three different functional clusters of orthologous groups (clusters) that codify carbohydrate metabolism, envelope biogenesis, viral defence mechanisms, and mobilome inclusions. The pan-genome of Ligilactobacillus aviarius is a closed pan-genome, frequently found in poultry and highly prevalent across chicken faecal samples. The genome of L. aviarius codifies different clusters of glycoside hydrolases and glycosyltransferases that mediate interactions with the host cells. Accessory features, such as antiviral mechanisms and prophage inclusions, variate amongst strains from different GIT sections. This information provides hints about the interaction of this species with viral particles and other bacterial species. This work highlights functional adaptability traits present in L. aviarius that make it a dominant key member of the poultry gut microbiota and enlightens the convergent ecological relation of this species to the poultry gut environment

Teasing apart the host‑related, nutrient‑related and temperature‑related effects shaping the phenology and microbiome of the tropical seagrass Halophila stipulacea

17 pages, 6 figures.-- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License[Background] Halophila stipulacea seagrass meadows are an ecologically important and threatened component of the ecosystem in the Gulf of Aqaba. Recent studies have demonstrated correlated geographic patterns for leaf epiphytic community composition and leaf morphology, also coinciding with different levels of water turbidity and nutrient concentrations. Based on these observations, workers have suggested an environmental microbial fingerprint, which may reflect various environmental stress factors seagrasses have experienced, and may add a holobiont level of plasticity to seagrasses, assisting their acclimation to changing environments and through range expansion. However, it is difficult to tease apart environmental effects from host-diversity dependent effects, which have covaried in field studies, although this is required in order to establish that differences in microbial community compositions among sites are driven by environmental conditions rather than by features governed by the host[Results] In this study we carried out a mesocosm experiment, in which we studied the effects of warming and nutrient stress on the composition of epiphytic bacterial communities and on some phenological traits. We studied H. stipulacea collected from two different meadows in the Gulf of Aqaba, representing differences in the host and the environment alike. We found that the source site from which seagrasses were collected was the major factor governing seagrass phenology, although heat increased shoot mortality and nutrient loading delayed new shoot emergence. Bacterial diversity, however, mostly depended on the environmental conditions. The most prominent pattern was the increase in Rhodobacteraceae under nutrient stress without heat stress, along with an increase in Microtrichaceae. Together, the two taxa have the potential to maintain nitrate reduction followed by an anammox process, which can together buffer the increase in nutrient concentrations across the leaf surface[Conclusions] Our results thus corroborate the existence of environmental microbial fingerprints, which are independent from the host diversity, and support the notion of a holobiont level plasticity, both important to understand and monitor H. stipulacea ecology under the changing climateThis research was funded by The Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), Israeli-Italian binational Grant Number 3-15152 (GW, PBC) and ICA in Israel, Grant 03-16-06a (AS)Peer reviewe

Widespread prevalence but contrasting patterns of intragenomic rRNA polymorphisms in nematodes : implications for phylogeny, species delimitation and life history inference

Ribosomal RNA genes have long been a favoured locus in phylogenetic and metabarcoding studies. Within a genome, rRNA loci are organized as tandem repeated arrays and the copies are homogenized through the process of concerted evolution. However, some level of rRNA variation (intragenomic polymorphism) is known to persist and be maintained in the genomes of many species. In nematode worms, the extent of rRNA polymorphism (RP) across species and the evolutionary and life history factors that contribute to the maintenance of intragenomic RP is largely unknown. Here, we present an extensive analysis across 30 terrestrial nematode species representing a range of free-living and parasitic taxa isolated worldwide. Our results indicate that RP is common and widespread, ribosome function appears to be maintained despite mutational changes, and intragenomic variants are stable in the genome and neutrally evolving. However, levels of variation were varied widely across rRNA locus and species, with some taxa observed to lack RP entirely. Higher levels of RP were significantly correlated with shorter generation time and high reproductive rates, and population-level factors may play a role in the geographic and phylogenetic structuring of rRNA variants observed in genera such as Rotylenchulus and Pratylenchus. Although RP did not dramatically impact the clustering and recovery of taxa in mock metabarcoding analyses, the present study has significant implications for global biodiversity estimates of nematode species derived from environmental rRNA amplicon studies, as well as our understanding of the evolutionary and ecological factors shaping genetic diversity across the nematode Tree of Life

Novel taxonomic and functional diversity of eight bacteria from the upper digestive tract of chicken.

Supplementary Material for 'Novel taxonomic and functional diversity of eight bacteria from the upper digestive tract of chicken', as described in International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.</p

Data_Sheet_1_Effects of microalgae as dietary supplement on palatability, digestibility, fecal metabolites, and microbiota in healthy dogs.PDF

The current trend of dog owners increasingly favoring the functional value of food to assure preventive health and wellbeing of their pets has been raising the interest in microalgae as natural additives with bioactive properties. However, scientific studies addressing the effects of microalgae supplementation in diets for dogs are scarce. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of dietary supplementation with three microalgae species (Chlorella vulgaris, Nannochloropsis oceanica, and Tetradesmus obliquus) on diet palatability, total tract digestibility, metabolizable energy content, fecal metabolites and microbiota of dogs. Twelve adult Beagle dogs were used in three two-bowl tests to compare the palatability of a commercial complete diet for adult dogs without (reference diet) and with 1.5% supplementation of each microalgae. From the results obtained, three digestibility trials were performed according to a replicated Latin square 3 × 3, with six adult Beagle dogs, three experimental periods of 10 days each, and three dietary supplementation levels of microalgae (0.5, 1.0, and 1.5%). In each trial, effects of microalgae supplementation levels on total tract digestibility, metabolizable energy content, fecal metabolites and microbiota of dogs were evaluated. First diet approached or tasted was not significantly affected by microalgae inclusion, but dogs showed a preference for the reference diet over the diets with 1.5% inclusion of C. vulgaris and N. oceanica, no difference being observed with 1.5% T. obliquus. In all digestibility trials, dietary supplementation with microalgae up to 1.5% did not greatly affected the dietary chemical composition and kept unaffected food intake, fecal output and metabolites, and digestibility of nutrients and energy. Compared with the reference diet, supplementation with C. vulgaris increased protein digestibility. Fecal characteristics and metabolites were affected by microalgae supplementation, being the effects dependent on the species. Fecal microbiota composition of dogs fed with microalgae-supplemented diets was modified by promoting the beneficial Turicibacter and Peptococcus genera associated with gut health and activation of the immune system. Overall, the results support C. vulgaris, N. oceanica, and T. obliquus as sustainable functional supplements that potentially enhance gastrointestinal health of dogs through the selective stimulation of microbiota without detrimental effects on food intake and digestibility.</p