The high proportion Vibrionales (50%) agrees with those proportions found in a meta-analysis based on GenBank sequences of other marine carnivores [11] and bacteria from this order have also previously

been isolated from the Atlantic cod gut e.g. [18]. Nevertheless, the intestinal community PLX4720 also contains a substantial proportion of Bacteriodales (17%). Such abundance has previously been proposed to be a characteristic of the microbial community of marine herbivores, and this finding this website suggests that the distinction between herbivorous and carnivorous fish may be more subtle [11]. Members of the most abundant orders agree with those reported previously in Atlantic cod using both culture-dependent and culture-independent techniques [18–22]. In addition, using high throughput sequencing, several more orders are detected that are relatively rare. Shared OTUs belong to the orders Vibrionales, Bacteroidales, Erysipelotrichales, Clostridiales, Alteromonadales and Deferribacterales (Figure 2b). Overall, taxonomical diversity (based on number of OTUs per order) does not necessarily correlate to the number of reads per order. Figure 2 Taxonomical community composition of the intestinal microbial community in Atlantic cod. (a) Individual sequence read number per order, illustrated by circle surface area, show a variable microbial community composition. Members from the order Vibrionales Selleckchem ARN-509 are

most abundant, followed by those from the orders Bacteriodales, Erysipelotrichales and Clostridiales. The number of reads beloning to particular taxonomic classifications can fluctuate several orders of magnitude among specimens. Overall read number per order for all specimens (% median read number) is given in front of the order name. (b) The number of individual OTUs detected per order (97% sequence similarity), illustrated by circle surface area, show that the taxonomically most

diverse orders are not necessarily the most abundant Selleck Cisplatin based on the number of sequence reads. The presence of a shared OTU (*) is indicated in front of the order name. To our knowledge, our dataset provides the first characterization using high throughput sequencing of individual intestinal microbial community structure in a natural population of marine fish. It is possible that our sampling retrieved fish from different populations. Nevertheless, tagging studies in the Norwegian Skagerrak coastal region have shown that adult Atlantic cod have confined home ranges [23] and genetic studies have revealed fine scale geographical population structure [24, 25]. Considering our single sample location, far from the fjord exit, and comparable size of individuals (Additional file 1: Table S2), we assume that our individuals were retrieved from a local population experiencing similar environmental conditions. Among our samples, we find 10 shared OTUs, with profound variation in the number of reads per individual.