Poster Presentations

Session Title: The Animal Microbiome
Presentation Date: Monday, August 18, 2008
Poster Board Number: 0389

PARSING THE ALLOCHTHONOUS FROM THE AUTOCHTHONOUS FUNGAL BIOTA IN THE POULTRY INTESTINE

A. Scupham
National Animal Disease Center, USDA, ARS, Pre-Harvest Food Safety and Enteric Diseases, Ames, United States of America

Examination of intestinal microbial communities is complicated by the presence of both autochthonous (native) and allochthonous (transient) taxa. To examine community dynamics in poultry ceca an experiment was performed in which day-old turkeys were housed in isolators on raised wire flooring. Half of the birds were orally inoculated with the intestinal contents of an adult turkey and half were sham inoculated. Turkeys had ad libitum access to irradiated feed and sterile water. Turkeys were killed at 21d and 18S libraries of their fungal communities, as well as the communities found in the adult inoculum and the irradiated feed, were examined via oligonucleotide fingerprinting of rRNA genes (OFRG). Within 1001 18S clones examined, a total of nine taxa were identified. Ascomycetes included two species of Candida, Eurotium herbariorum, a species with 96% sequence similarity to Kluyveromyces, and a species with 97% similarity to Cladosporium. Basidiomycetes included high- similarity (97%) and low- similarity (95%) groups related to Malassezia and both high- similarity (99%) and low- similarity (93-96%) groups related to Trichosporon. Candida edaphicus was prevalent in all four libraries, suggesting this yeast was present in the food. Trichosporon (99% similarity) represented 20% of the clones from sham inoculated birds, but < 7% in the other libraries, suggesting this microbe colonized at hatch but was outcompeted by the adult inoculum. Malassezia (97% similarity) comprised 30% of the inoculated hatchling library, 14% of the adult inoculum library, and 4% of the sham inoculated hatchling library, indicating active colonization of the ceca by this fungus.