The intestinal microbioma of healthy Siberian sturgeons (Acipenser baerii) from two geographical locations in Spain

The gut microbiota play key roles for animal health, including immune and metabolic homeostasis. Despite its economic relevance, studies addressing the sturgeon's gut microbiome are very scarce and focused on the hindgut. The objective of this work was to compare the microbiome of two different intestinal locations separated by the spiral valve (proximal and distal intestine) of healthy Siberian sturgeons (A. baerii) reared in two different farms in Spain by using the Illumina technology. Despite a high degree of inter-individual variability was observed, some differences between the anatomical parts and between the geographical locations could be observed. Our results showed that the sequences corresponding to the most abundant taxa guided the separation in clusters according to the anatomical region (part of the gut) while the less abundant ones guided the clustering according to the geographical location (farm). Finally, our results also suggest the existence of a core gut microbiome among the fish analyzed in this study, which may be useful in future studies aimed to establish differences on the basis of fish age, season or disease.