Definition
The gut microbial community is dominated by Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes, with a low percentage of methanogens. Collectively, these microorganisms play important roles in the breakdown of complex carbohydrates and in the modification of chemical metabolites prevalent in herbage diets.
Introduction
Herbivory involves the ingestion of the fibrous parts of plants (e.g., leaves, stems, and buds) and the subsequent breakdown of the complex carbohydrates (i.e., celluloses and hemicelluloses) that are present in plant cell walls. The breakdown of complex carbohydrates makes an important contribution to host nutrition. Herbivory is relatively rare in reptiles (i.e., <2 % of reptiles of >7,800 recognized species of squamate reptiles), being restricted to a few turtles, 40 species of tortoises (order Chelonia), and about 50 species of...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Cantarel BL, Coutinho PM, Rancurel C, Bernard T, Lombard V, Henrissat B. The Carbohydrate-Active EnZymes database (CAZy): an expert resource for glycogenomics. Nucleic Acids Res. 2009;37:D233–8.
Forney LJ, Zhou X, Brown CJ. Molecular microbial ecology: land of the one-eyed king. Curr Opin Microbiol. 2004;7:210–20.
Frost LS, Leplae R, Summers AO, Toussaint A. Mobile genetic elements: the agents of open source evolution. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2005;3:722–32.
Hackstein JHP, Van Alen T. Fecal methanogens and vertebrate evolution. Evolution. 1996;50:559–72.
Hong PY, Wheeler E, Cann IK, Mackie RI. Phylogenetic analysis of the fecal microbial community in herbivorous land and marine iguanas of the Galápagos Islands using 16S rRNA-based pyrosequencing. ISME J. 2011;5:1461–70.
Lankau EW, Cruz Bedon L, Mackie RI. Salmonella strains isolated from Galápagos iguanas show spatial structuring of serovar and genomic diversity. PLoS One. 2012a;7:e37302.
Lankau EW, Hong PY, Mackie RI. Ecological drift and local exposures drive enteric bacterial community differences within species of Galápagos iguanas. Mol Ecol. 2012b;21:1779–88.
Ley RE, Hamady M, Lozupone C, Turnbaugh PJ, Ramey RR, Bircher JS, Schlegel ML, Tucker TA, Schrenzel MD, Knight R, Gordon JI. Evolution of mammals and their gut microbes. Science. 2008;320:1647–51.
Liu WT, Stahl DA. Molecular approaches for the measurement of density, diversity, and phylogeny. In: Hurst CJ, Crawford RL, Garland JL, et al., editors. Manual of environmental microbiology. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: American Society for Microbiology; 2007. p. 139–56.
Mackie RI, Rycyk M, Ruemmler RL, Aminov RI, Wikelski M. Biochemical and microbiological evidence for fermentative digestion in free-living land iguanas (Conolophus pallidus) and marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) on the Galápagos archipelago. Physiol Biochem Zool. 2004;77:127–38.
Mackie RI, Nelson DM, Wheeler E, Wikelski M, Cann IK. Fermentative digestion in herbivorous lizards: bacterial population analysis in the intestinal tract of free-living land (Conolophus pallidus) and marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) on the Galápagos archipelago. In: Morris S, Vosloo A, editors. Molecules to migration: the pressures of life. Bologna: Medimond; 2008. p. 193–202.
Muegge BD, Kuczynski J, Knights D, Clemente JC, Gonzalez A, Fontana L, Henrissat B, Knight R, Gordon JI. Diet drives convergence in gut microbiome functions across mammalian phylogeny and within humans. Science. 2011;332:970–4.
Nelson DM, Cann IK, Altermann E, Mackie RI. Phylogenetic evidence for lateral gene transfer in the intestine of marine iguanas. PLoS One. 2010;5:e10785.
Roh SW, Abell GC, Kim KH, Nam YD, Bae JW. Comparing microarrays and next-generation sequencing technologies for microbial ecology research. Trends Biotechnol. 2010;28:291–9.
Wheeler E, Cann IKO, Mackie RI. Genomic fingerprinting and serotyping of Salmonella from Galápagos iguanas demonstrates island differences in strain diversity. Environ Microbiol Rep. 2011;3:166–73.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Hong, PY., Cann, I., Mackie, R.I. (2014). Terrestrial Vertebrate Animal Metagenomics: Herbivorous Reptiles. In: Nelson, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Metagenomics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6418-1_109-4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6418-1_109-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6418-1
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences