The Gut Microbiota of Naturally Occurring and Laboratory Aquaculture Lytechinus variegatus Revealed Differences in the Community Composition, Taxonomic Co-Occurrence, and Predicted Functional Attributes

Sea urchins, in many instances, are collected from the wild, maintained laboratory aquaculture environment, and used as model animals for various scientific investigations. It has been increasingly evident that diet-driven dysbiosis of gut microbiome could affect animal health physiology, thereby impacting outcome studies. In this study, we compared between naturally occurring (ENV) formulated diet-fed (LAB) sea urchin Lytechinus variegatus by amplicon sequencing V4 region 16S rRNA gene bioinformatics tools. Overall, ENV digesta had higher taxa richness with an abundance Propionigenium, Photobacterium, Roseimarinus, Flavobacteriales. contrast, LAB group revealed fewer richness, but noticeable abundances Arcobacter, Agarivorans, Shewanella. However, Campylobacteraceae, primarily represented Arcobacter spp., was commonly associated tissues both groups whereas Gammaproteobacteria, particularly Vibrio spp. Similarly, co-occurrence network displayed taxonomic organizations interconnected being key digesta, respectively. Predicted functional analysis microbiota showed a trend energy-related metabolisms, amino acids, carbohydrate, lipid metabolisms heightened digesta. This study provides outlook laboratory-formulated L. predicted metabolic profile to animals, which should be taken into consideration consistency, reproducibility, translatability