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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2008, p. 5905-5912, Vol. 74, No. 19
0099-2240/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.00574-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Bacterial Community in the Crop of the Hoatzin, a Neotropical Folivorous Flying Bird{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Filipa Godoy-Vitorino,1 Ruth E. Ley,2 Zhan Gao,3 Zhiheng Pei,3 Humberto Ortiz-Zuazaga,4 Luis R. Pericchi,5 Maria A. Garcia-Amado,6 Fabian Michelangeli,6 Martin J. Blaser,3 Jeffrey I. Gordon,2 and Maria G. Domínguez-Bello1*

Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00931-3360,1 Center for Genome Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63108,2 Department of Microbiology, New York University School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, New York 10016,3 High Performance Computing Facility, University of Puerto Rico, P.O. Box 23334, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00931-3334,4 Department of Mathematics, College of Natural Sciences, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00931-3360,5 Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC), Caracas, Venezuela6

Received 10 March 2008/ Accepted 11 July 2008

The hoatzin is unique among known avian species because of the fermentative function of its enlarged crop. A small-bodied flying foregut fermenter is a paradox, and this bird provides an interesting model to examine how diet selection and the gut microbiota contribute to maximizing digestive efficiency. Therefore, we characterized the bacterial population in the crop of six adult hoatzins captured from the wild. A total of 1,235 16S rRNA gene sequences were grouped into 580 phylotypes (67% of the pooled species richness sampled, based on Good's coverage estimator, with CACE and Chao1 estimates of 1,709 and 1,795 species-level [99% identity] operational taxonomic units, respectively). Members of 9 of the ~75 known phyla in Bacteria were identified in this gut habitat; the Firmicutes were dominant (67% of sequences, belonging to the classes Clostridia, Mollicutes, and Bacilli), followed by the Bacteroidetes (30%, mostly in the order Bacteroidales), Proteobacteria (1.8%), and Lentisphaerae, Verrucomicrobia, TM7, Spirochaetes, Actinobacteria, and Aminanaerobia (all <0.1%). The novelty in this ecosystem is great; 94% of the phylotypes were unclassified at the "species" level and thus likely include novel cellulolytic lineages.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR 00931-3360. Phone: (787) 764-0000, ext. 4883. Fax: (727) 764-3875. E-mail: mgdbello{at}uprr.pr

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 8 August 2008.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://aem.asm.org/.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2008, p. 5905-5912, Vol. 74, No. 19
0099-2240/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.00574-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





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