The abundance of carbohydrates, lipids, nucleotides, xenobiotics, energy, terpenoids, and polyketides metabolism was higher in spring than in other seasons.
Moreover, PICRUSt showed that the assimilation of nutrients were also varied seasonally.
Proteobacteria (35.45%), Firmicutes (26.7%), and Bacteroidetes (23.59%) were shown to be the better discriminators as they contributed the most to causing differences between seasons. Similar to diet composition, the microbiome also exhibited highly significant dissimilarity ( p < 0.001, R = 0.235) between spring/autumn and spring/summer seasons. The DNA analysis revealed that chipmunk mainly feeds on fungi, including Aspergillus and Penicillium genus. While herbivorous and fungivorous nature in spring. These results signify the insectivorous nature of the chipmunk in summer and autumn. Whereas, nematodes showed maximum abundance from spring (15.8%) to summer (20.6%) and autumn (24.1%). Further, Ascomycota was observed at 43.8% in spring, which reduced to 36.6% in summer and the lowest (31.3%) in autumn. Results revealed that seasons strongly affected a diet: streptophyte accounted for 37% in spring, which was lower than in summer (34.3%) and autumn (31.4%). Additionally, the influence of different seasons was also investigated by using next-generation sequencing. This study explored the diet, gut microbiota composition, and chipmunk metabolism. The above factors, as well as flexibility toward seasonal shifts, are critical in defining its growth rates, health, survivorship, and population stability. No information is known about the strict diet, gut microbiota structure, and metabolism profile of chipmunks and how they diversify seasonally. Tamias Sibiricus is the only member of the genus Tamias, a significant and vigorous seed distributor and vital food for their predators.
0 kommentar(er)
