Developmental and gut-related changes to microbiomes of the cultured juvenile spiny lobster Panulirus ornatus

Abstract

With recent technologies making it possible for commercial scale closed life-cycle aquaculture production of spiny lobster (Panulirus ornatus) comes a strong impetus to further understand aspects of lobster health. The gut microbiome plays a crucial role in host health, affecting growth, digestion, immune responses and pathogen resistance. Herein we characterise and compare gut microbiomes across different developmental stages (6-7 days post-emergence [dpe], 52 dpe and 13 months post-emergence [mpe]) and gut regions (foregut, midgut and hindgut) of cultured P. ornatus juveniles. Gut samples were analysed using 16S rRNA next-generation sequencing. Core gut microbiomes of P. ornatus comprised the phyla Tenericutes and Proteobacteria. Within class Gammaproteobacteria, families Pseudoalteromonadaceae and Vibrionaceae were dominant members across the majority of the gut microbiomes. Characterisation of bacterial communities from 13 mpe lobsters indicated that the hindgut microbiome was more diverse and compositionally dissimilar to the foregut and midgut. The bacterial composition of the hindgut was more similar among younger juveniles (6-7 dpe and 52 dpe) compared to 13 mpe lobsters. This is the first study to explore gut microbiomes of spiny lobster juveniles. We demonstrate that the composition of the gut microbiome was shaped by gut region, whereas the structure of the hindgut microbiome was influenced by developmental stage.

The gut bacterial communities across six grasshopper species from a coastal tallgrass prairie

“…Tenericutes are a phylum of bacteria with small genomes and no cell wall [37]. They are known to have symbiotic relationships with arthropods as well as other animals and plants [37][38][39][40]. Within the phylum Tenericutes is the class Mollicutes, which includes the order Entomoplasmatales that houses many species which have widely reported associations with insects, including spiroplasmas [38,39].…”

“…The absence of spiroplasmas in pea-aphids affects host fitness by decreasing offspring production and survival [39]. Other known Entomoplasmatales-insect associations include Dabulus maidis leafhoppers, Heliconius butterflies, New World army ants, and Drosophila hydei, which have been shown to have nonpathogenic entomoplasmatales in their gut that may be linked to increased host survival and fitness [38][39][40][41][42][43]. Finally, in mammals, mice fed a high-fat diet have decreased numbers of Tenericutes in their gut, suggesting that there is a possible connection between diet in mammals and levels of Tenericutes [44].…”

Spatial and temporal axes impact ecology of the gut microbiome in juvenile European lobster (Homarus gammarus)

“…However, these communities were not analysed with respect to their taxonomic composition. Vibrionaceae and Pseudoalteromonadaceae were also the dominant inhabitants of the majority of spiny lobster (Panulirus ornatus) guts across different developmental life stages with mollicute sequences also accounting for a large proportion of the hindgut community sampled at the age of 13 months [24]. Temporal shifts in the dominance of Gammaproteobacteria and Mollicutes were also evident in gut communities isolated from Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus) [25].…”

Aquimarina sp. Associated With a Cuticular Disease of Cultured Larval Palinurid and Scyllarid Lobsters

“…Total nucleic acid was extracted from preserved pereiopod samples (section “Bacterial Isolation”) using a similar protocol to section “Sanger Sequencing” with the modification of extraction buffer composition (4 M Urea, 1% SDS, 0.2 M NaCl, and 1 mM sodium citrate) supplemented with Proteinase K. The V1–V3 hypervariable region of bacterial 16S rRNA was amplified using barcoded fusion primers with the same PCR reactions, thermal cycling program, and gel electrophoresis as described by Ooi et al (2017) . Barcoded amplicon sample libraries were sent to Macrogen (Seoul, Korea) for 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing using the 454 GS-FLX Titanium (Roche, United States) platform, and the sequences were deposited in NCBI Sequence Read Archive under BioProject accession number PRJNA659570.…”

“…Surveillance and diagnosis of emerging diseases ( Goulden et al, 2012 ; Ooi et al, 2017 ) are required as aquaculture technologies for Palinurid and Scyllarid lobsters transition to commercial scale ( Smith et al, 2017 ). Several disease conditions have been reported anecdotally within experimental hatcheries of Palinurid lobsters, ornate spiny lobster ( Panulirus ornatus ) and eastern rock lobster ( Sagmariasus verreauxi ), and the Scyllarid slipper lobster Thenus australiensis from around the Australasian region (pers.…”