| 描述信息 |
Intestinal microflora have an important impact on the host's diet, environmental adaptation and physical health. The health of captive Asian elephants and the protection of wild Asian elephants have attracted more and more attention. In order to find out the reasons why captive Asian elephants are susceptible to intestinal diseases and propose preventive and control measures, we first investigated and compared the differences between captive and wild Asian elephants foraging plants in wild. Then used16SrRNA high-throughput sequencing technology to study the differences in the bacterial communities of the two Asian elephants. Compared with wild Asian elephants, it is found that captive Asian elephants have low diversity of foraging plants and low intestinal bacteria diversity. We also used machine learning methods to find 13 bacterial features to distinguish between wild and captive Asian elephants, and only one bacterial feature focused on the captive group. Finally, we used weighted co-occurrence network analysis to obtain bacterial modules that were significantly related to captive and wild Asian elephants, the number of which was 3 and 10, respectively. The key bacteria and potential functions of each module were also predicted and discussed. Finally, the long-term monotonous diet with high sugar content and the problem of overnutrition make captive Asian elephants have low intestinal bacterial diversity, single characteristic bacteria and few bacterial interaction modules, which in turn leads to the decrease in the diversity of foraging plants in wild. These may be the reasons why captive Asian elephants are prone to intestinal diseases. The survey results of Asian elephants foraging plants in wild can provide more reasonable alternative foods for improving the construction of wild Asian elephant food bases, and make a certain contribution to alleviating human elephant conflicts. |
