Defining gut mycobiota for wild animals: a need for caution in assigning authentic resident fungal taxa

Abstract

Animal gut mycobiota, the community of fungi that reside within the gastrointestinal tract, make an important contribution to host health. Accordingly, there is an emerging interest to quantify the gut mycobiota of wild animals. However, many studies of wild animal gut mycobiota do not distinguish between the fungi that likely can reside within animal gastrointestinal tracts from the fungal taxa that are non-residents, such as macrofungi, lichens or plant symbionts/pathogens that can be ingested as part of the host’s diet. Confounding the non-resident and resident gut fungi may obscure attempts to identify processes associated with the authentic, resident gut mycobiota per se. To redress this problem, we propose some strategies to filter the taxa identified within an apparent gut mycobiota based on an assessment of host ecology and fungal traits. Consideration of the different sources and roles of fungi present within the gastrointestinal tract should facilitate a more precise understanding of the causes and consequences of variation in wild animal gut mycobiota composition.

Interpretation of gut microbiota data in the ‘eye of the beholder’: A commentary and re‐evaluation of data from ‘Impacts of radiation exposure on the bacterial and fungal microbiome of small mammals in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone’

“…Amplicon sequencing-based analyses of wildlife gut mycobiota thus require an assessment of the ecology of host(s) and fungi to identify the possible source(s) of fungal SVs and make better informed conclusions about ecological and evolutionary drivers of inter-and intraspecific differences in gut mycobiota (Lavrinienko, Scholier, et al, 2021).…”

Predicting global numbers of teleomorphic ascomycetes

“…Coprophilous fungi grow, sporulate and germinate on herbivore dung (Tretter et al 2014;Lazarus et al 2017) and they are specialized to survive in the harsh environment of the gastrointestinal tract of animals (Richardson 2001b;Bell 2005;Kirschner et al 2015;De Souza et al 2017;Lavrinienko et al 2021). Coprophilous fungi recycle the nutrients in animal dung and release nutrients to the soil (Basumatary and McDonald 2017;Florenzano 2019).…”

“…Species richness and composition of coprophilous ascomycetes differ with abiotic and biotic factors. Intra-and inter-specific interactions in a dung pile affect fungal succession and species composition (Maynard et al 2018;Lavrinienko et al 2021). Many coprophilous ascomycetes are most common on only one or a few dung types (Lundqvist 1972) and dung from animals that live together generally show a similar species composition (Richardson 2001a).…”

Fungi Associated With Sheep Skin

“…Endophytic fungi are used as a successful biological control agent in phytopathology. Mutualism with large animals needs high caution to assign authentic and allochthonous fungi associated with the animal bodies (Lavrinienko et al 2021) Mycobiota of animals either reside in the gut or on the coat. The gut mycobiota has a further health significance than normal skin flora (Nilsson et al 2019;Richard and Sokol 2019).…”