The gut bacterial and parasitic microbiome of wild mice in Ishikawa Prefecture

Abstract

The environment profoundly affects the gut microbiota of wild rodents, which are reservoirs of various infectious diseases. In the gut of wild rodents, parasites cohabitate and interact with the bacteria. Thus, monitoring the gut microbes is important for the prediction of future outbreaks of zoonosis, as well as the livestock infectious diseases. However, reports on the gut microbiome of wild rodents in Japan are limited. In the present study, we investigated the gut symbiosis of prokaryotes and eukaryotes in wild mice captured at the two sites around Lake Kahoku-gata in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. The diversity and composition of the microbiome differ between the locations around the same lake, highlighting the need to cover several sites, even in the same water system, for the precise prediction of possible zoonosis in the future.