Impacts of Captive Domestication and Geographical Divergence on the Gut Microbiome of Endangered Forest Musk Deer

作者：Huilin Liu, Lu Xiao, Zhiqiang Liu, You Deng, Jinpeng Zhu, Chengzhong Yang, Qing Liu, Di Tian, X. Cui, Jianjun Peng · 发表于：Animals · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.3390/ani15131954 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Gut microbiota and health、Mycobacterium research and diagnosis

Forest musk deer (Moschus berezovskii Flerov), a critically endangered ruminant species, faces extinction risks, with captive populations further threatened by prevalent digestive and immune disorders. This study utilized comparative metagenomic sequencing to assess intestinal microbiota structure and functional profiles between wild populations in Chongqing and Hunan and captive individuals. Wild populations exhibited a Pseudomonadota-dominated gut microbiota (significantly more abundant than in captive counterparts), enriched with lignin-degrading genera Novosphingobium and Acinetobacter. In contrast, the captive group demonstrated increased abundances of Bacillota/Bacteroidota, alongside abnormal proliferation of Escherichia and Clostridium. Both alpha and beta diversity analyses confirmed significant compositional divergences among the three groups, with wild populations maintaining higher diversity than captive populations. Notably, while substantial disparities in microbial abundance existed between wild populations (attributed to habitat vegetation differences), core microbial diversity and carbohydrate metabolic functions exhibited convergence. Functional analyses marked divergences in metabolic pathways: Captive microbiota showed enrichment in translation and glycan metabolism pathways, whereas wild populations displayed pronounced enrichment in immune regulation and environmental sensing pathways. These findings establish a theoretical foundation for optimizing wild...