The study of microbiodiversity, function and ecological adaptability of the digestive tract of highland animals.

Rat rabbit is a small wild herbivorous animal, belongs to the rabbit-shaped eye, and rabbits, hares are close relatives, mainly in Asia, the Americas and Europe.
in China, most of the rats and rabbits are located in and around the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
of which the plateau rat rabbit and the Daur rat rabbit are two more common species, the plateau rat rabbit is mainly distributed in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau above 3000m above sea level, Daur rat rabbit lives in the Inner Mongolia grassland snare of about 1000m.
on the grasslands, they eat a large amount of grass every day (about half the amount of each adult rat and rabbit) and may be associated with the degradation of grasslands.
the digestion of grass in the rat rabbit depends on the role of micro-organisms in the digestive tract, the diversity of the microbiome in different parts of the digestive tract of the mouse rabbit is not clear.
The research team of Li Xiangzhen of the Chengdu Institute of Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences studied the diversity and interrelationship between the oral, stomach, small intestine, blind intestine and colon microbiome savels of the highland rat rabbit and Daol rabbit, and explored the ecosystem stability of the microbial community in each digestive tract.
study found that the main food fermentation organs, the blind intestine and colon, had higher intestinal microbiodiversity than other regions, and that the structure of gut microbes in different intestinal regions was significantly differentiated.
network topology analysis found that the proportion of microbial positive correlations in the blind intestines of rats and rabbits was less, indicating that the blind intestine microbiome had fewer cooperative relationships and higher functional redundancy.
based on ecological models, it is found that blind intestines have a higher ecosystem stability.
this provides favorable conditions for the fermentation of the dyscant plant polysaccharides and ensures the digestion and degradation of the large amount of grass that the rat and rabbit eat.
the study laid the foundation for the study of microbiodiversity, function and ecological adaptability of the digestive tract of highland animals.
related research in the journal Guts domain sthed d and interactions of the public communities in pikas (Ochotona curzoniae and Ochotona daurica) in FEMS Microbiology.
research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Sichuan Science and Technology Project and the China Biodiversity Monitoring Network Fund.
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