Intestinal microbiota 16S rRNA (V4 variable region) of juvenile European seabass

The intestinal microbiota is at the centre of nutritional aquaculture research, as it has been shown to regulate nutrient uptake and metabolic changes in fish. The aim of this study was to compare the intestinal microbiota of experimentally fed juvenile European seabass, after a 17-week laboratory-scale feeding trial with five experimental diets. Five experimental diets were formulated with combinations of protein and lipid sources from fish, plants, insect meal (Hermetia illucens), and poultry by-products to maintain isoproteic (45%), isolipidic (20%), and approximately isoenergetic (20.3 MJ/kg) compositions, while considering the nutritional requirements for juvenile European seabass. The results indicate that the gut microbiota of juvenile European seabass is more stable than the microbiota of subadult European seabass fed the same experimental feed formulations (data on subadults published previously).