Relationships between vertebrates and their symbiotic microbes are increasingly well studied. Diet is known to influence the relative abundance of gut bacteria “species” (Operational Taxonomic Units) whose numbers increase when their preferred substrate is eaten. Gut bacteria also influence their host’s diet choices. The link between geographic location and gut microbe community compositions has been established on many scales wherein global geographic regions have distinct gut microbe communities, as do households. We are interested in how gut microbe communities of herbivorous fish vary on different spatial scales. Jamaican reefs are among the most degraded in the Caribbean with few large herbivorous fish while San Salvador in the Bahamas has both low and high coral cover reefs with more robust herbivorous fish communities. We asked, do gut microbe communities in the Stoplight Parrotfish vary among sites within islands and between islands? We compared the gut microbe communities of field-collected and market purchased parrotfish from 5 locations around San Salvador and 3 locations around Jamaica to test this hypothesis. In addition, we conducted a meta-analysis of published data to test the relative importance of region, salinity, and wild/captive sources in determining the gut microbe community composition of Atlantic Salmon, a commercially and ecologically important species.
Results/Conclusions
Using Bray-Curtis Similarity ordinances, we identified differences among gut microbe communities of Stoplight Parrotfish collected from different geographic locations. These results align with studies in other vertebrates and suggest that region influences gut microbe community composition. Furthermore, region mattered more than salinity or wild/captive status of Atlantic Salmon. In future work, we will try to learn the ecological underpinnings of these patterns and ask, are these differences a result of different environmental sources of bacteria or perhaps regional differences in diet or habitat quality?