Environmental sex reversal in parrotfish does not cause differences in the structure of their gut microbial communities

In this study, we investigated the gut microbial communities of three species of parrotfish including Scarus forsteni, Scarus ghobban, and Hipposcarus longiceps. The gut microbial communities of these three species were mainly composed of Proteobacteria (Gamma) and Firmicutes, while at the family level, they mainly included Vibrionaceae, Burkholderiaceae, Enterobacteriaceae, Streptococcacea, and Erwiniaceae. Although at the genus level, there were a large number of unclassified lineages, those that could be classified were mainly composed of Vibrio, Photobacterium, Enterococcus and Lactococcus. Moreover, the gut microbial communities of these three species of parrotfish differed significantly not only in their community structure but also in their microbial functional information structure, mainly in terms of aspartate and asparagine biosynthesis, histidine degradation, inositol degradation, heptose biosynthesis, chitin derivatives degradation, enterobactin biosynthesis, and thiazole biosynthesis.