Comparative Analysis of Intestinal Microflora Between Two Developmental Stages of Rimicaris kairei, a Hydrothermal Shrimp From the Central Indian Ridge

Li Qi; Chun-Ang Lian; Fang-Chao Zhu; Mengke Shi; Li-Sheng He

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2021.802888

Comparative Analysis of Intestinal Microflora Between Two Developmental Stages of Rimicaris kairei, a Hydrothermal Shrimp From the Central Indian Ridge

Front Microbiol. 2022 Feb 15:12:802888. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.802888. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Li Qi^{1

2}, Chun-Ang Lian¹, Fang-Chao Zhu^{1

3}, Mengke Shi^{1

2}, Li-Sheng He¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sanya, China.
² College of Earth Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Tropical Marine Ecosystem and Bioresource, Fourth Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beihai, China.

Abstract

Despite extreme physical and chemical characteristics, deep-sea hydrothermal vents provide a place for fauna survival and reproduction. The symbiotic relationship of chemotrophic microorganisms has been investigated in the gill of Rimicaris exoculata, which are endemic to the hydrothermal vents of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. However, only a few studies have examined intestinal symbiosis. Here, we studied the intestinal fauna in juvenile and adult Rimicaris kairei, another species in the Rimicaris genus that was originally discovered at the Kairei and Edmond hydrothermal vent fields in the Central Indian Ridge. The results showed that there were significant differences between juvenile and adult gut microbiota in terms of species richness, diversity, and evenness. The values of Chao1, observed species, and ASV rarefaction curves indicated almost four times the number of species in adults compared to juveniles. In juveniles, the most abundant phylum was Deferribacterota, at 80%, while in adults, Campilobacterota was the most abundant, at 49%. Beta diversity showed that the intestinal communities of juveniles and adults were clearly classified into two clusters based on the evaluations of Bray-Curtis and weighted UniFrac distance matrices. Deferribacteraceae and Sulfurovum were the main featured bacteria contributing to the difference. Moreover, functional prediction for all of the intestinal microbiota showed that the pathways related to ansamycin synthesis, branched-chain amino acid biosynthesis, lipid metabolism, and cell motility appeared highly abundant in juveniles. However, for adults, the most abundant pathways were those of sulfur transfer, carbohydrate, and biotin metabolism. Taken together, these results indicated large differences in intestinal microbial composition and potential functions between juvenile and adult vent shrimp (R. kairei), which may be related to their physiological needs at different stages of development.

Keywords: Deferribacteraceae; Rimicaris kairei; Sulfurovum; hydrothermal vent; intestine microflora.