Czech J. Anim. Sci., 2018, 63(1):24-31 | DOI: 10.17221/53/2017-CJAS

Dietary energy level affects the composition of cecal microbiota of starter Pekin ducklingsOriginal Paper

Jun-Qiang Liu¹, Yan-Hong Wang¹, Xing-Tang Fang¹, Ming Xie³, Yun-Sheng Zhang³, Shui-Sheng Hou³, Hong Chen¹, Guo-Hong Chen², Chun-Lei Zhang^*,1,2

¹ Institute of Cellular and Molecular Biology, School of Life Sciences, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, P.R. China

² College of Animal Science and Technology, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, P.R. China

³ Institute of Animal Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, P.R. China

In this study, we evaluated the phylogenetic diversity of the cecal microbiota of 3-week-old ducklings fed three diets differing in metabolizable energy. The contents of the ceca were collected from ducklings of different groups. The ceca bacterial DNA was isolated and the V3 to V4 regions of 16S rRNA genes were amplified. The amplicons were subjected to high-throughput sequencing to analyze the bacterial diversity of different groups. The predominant bacterial phyla were Bacteroidetes (~65.67%), Firmicutes (~17.46%), and Proteobacteria (~10.73%). The abundance of Bacteroidetes increased and that of Firmicutes decreased with increasing dietary energy level. The diversity decreased (Simpson diversity index and Shannon diversity index) with the increase in dietary energy level, but the richness remained constant. Notably, Brachyspira bacteria were detected with a very high relative abundance (4.91%) in ceca of ducks fed a diet with 11.30 MJ/kg metabolizable energy, suggesting that low energy content may affect their colonization in cecum.

Keywords: duck; bacterial diversity; dietary energy

Published: January 31, 2018  Show citation