Affiliation:
1. Mikrobielle Ökologie, Fachbereich Biologie, Universität Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz
2. Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, 35043 Marburg/Lahn, Germany
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The highly compartmentalized gut of soil-feeding termites is characterized by pronounced axial dynamics in physicochemical conditions and microbial processes. In a companion paper (D. Schmitt-Wagner, M. W. Friedrich, B. Wagner, and A. Brune, Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 69:6007-6017, 2003), we demonstrated that the variety of physicochemical conditions in the different gut compartments of
Cubitermes
spp. is reflected in the diversity of the respective intestinal microbial communities. Here, we used molecular fingerprints of 16S rRNA genes of the bacterial community, obtained by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis, to describe the axial dynamics of the bacterial community structure in the different gut sections. Comparison of the T-RFLP profiles with the predicted terminal restriction fragments of the clones in clone libraries of the gut segments in
Cubitermes orthognathus
confirmed that all hindgut sections harbored distinct bacterial communities. Morisita indices of community similarity, calculated by comparing the different patterns, revealed large differences between the bacterial communities of soil, gut, and nest material and also among the individual gut sections. By contrast, comparison of the homologous gut segments of different
Cubitermes
species indicated that the three termite species investigated possessed a similar, gut-specific microbiota that remained comparatively stable even during several months of maintenance in the laboratory.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Ecology,Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology,Food Science,Biotechnology
Cited by
77 articles.
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