Gut microbiota of Great tits (Parus major) under diets with different macronutrient contents

This study was conducted to investigate the flexibility and resilience of gut bacterial communities of Great tits under three macro-nutritionally different diets (a protein rich, a fat-and-fibre rich and a balanced diet). We exposed individuals to specific diets for four weeks to investigate the gut microbial changes due to nutritional content of their diet. Then we reversed all individuals to a standard diet to observe the recovery capability of the gut communities. We sequenced the v4 region of the 16S rRNA gene using an illumina MiSeq platform to examine the bacterial communities.