Scientists are beginning to decode endangered creatures’ microbial ecosystems
New Zealand’s critically endangered kākāpō, the world’s heaviest parrot, is flightless and nocturnal, with fragrant moss-green feathers, an odd, whiskery face, up to a 90-year life span—and a gut microbiome made almost entirely of the bacterium Escherichia coli.
“It’s very unusual. If you’d seen it in a human, you’d be worried,” West says. It’s not yet clear if it’s bad for kākāpō, but a microbiome so homogeneous can be cause for concern because it may not carry out all the functions a species needs. “If you’ve lost diversity, you’ve potentially lost some functionality of the microbiome,” West adds. The researchers also found that when they fed kākāpō chicks supplemental baby-parrot feed, a different bacterium took over their microbiome instead.
Biologists are still cataloging which microbes live on and inside most endangered species, and how those communities change over time, says Flinders University marine biologist Elizabeth Dinsdale, who dives with sharks to collect samples of their skin microbes. Roughly 90 percent of the microorganisms she has found are new to science, and her team has identified different populations of whale sharks by their typical skin microbiomes.
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