Longitudinal and multisite characterization of the skin microbiota of healthy horses

The objectives of this study were to describe the cutaneous bacterial microbiota in healthy horses and to evaluate the effect of body site, individual and season on taxonomic distributions, as well as alpha and beta diversity using high throughput sequencing of the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene. A total of 192 skin samples were collected from 12 horses at four time points (February, May, August and November 2019) from four body sites (abdomen, dorsum, groin, pastern).