Comparison of the Fecal Bacterial Microbiota between Healthy and Diarrheic Donkey Foals

Gut bacterial microbiota plays an important role in maintenance of health in animals and humans, and its dysbiosis is associated with many diseases. The role of the gut bacterial microbiota played in the occurrence of donkey foal diarrhea is still unrevealed. This study aims to determine the difference of the fecal bacterial microbiota between healthy and diarrhea Dezhou donkey foals. The fecal samples were collected form diarrhea (n = 10) and healthy (n = 10) donkey foals aged 15-30 days old which were obtained from the same farm. The fecal bacterial microbiota was characterized using 16S rRNA sequencing. The alpha diversity was used to character the gut bacterial microbiota between healthy group (H group) and diarrhea group (D group). The richness and diversity showed a significantly decrease in D group, indicating that dysbiosis of the gut bacterial microbiota occurred in donkey foals with diarrhea. Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) revealed a significant difference of bacterial microbiota structure between two groups (P < 0.05). Based on linear discriminant analysis-effect size (LEfSe), there is an enrichment of Campylobacter and Fusobacterium ( P < 0.05) and decrease of Akkermansia ( P < 0.01) in D group. For function prediction, the functional genes responsible for carbohydrate metabolism, amino acid metabolism and membrane transport were reduced in diarrheic foals. We speculated that the variance in relative abundance of Campylobacter , Fusobacterium and Akkermansia may be associated with diarrhea. Our findings provided insights into how to understand the pathogenesis and the prevention of diarrhea in donkey foals.