IDENTIFYING DIFFERENCES IN THE GUT MICROBIOME OF EASY AND HARD KEEPER HORSES

Amy BiddleThe equine gut harbors a diverse community of microbes that are crucial for proper digestion of plant materials and an essential component to the animal’s overall health. As recent studies have found links between the human gut microbiome and obesity, the gut microbiota appears to play in weight and health is further being discovered. The goal of this experiment is to identify differentially abundant bacterial species between horses with differing metabolic tendencies, also known as easy keepers and hard keepers. As a secondary goal, the differences in the microbiome regarding age were also observed to determine the effect of age in addition to keeper status, as metabolic tendency is often seen in horses to change over time. The primary methods of identifying microbial communities were 16S rRNA gene sequencing of DNA extracted from equine fecal matter. A series of analyses were used to compare microbiome data, including differential abundance, alpha diversity, beta diversity, Spearman’s Rank correlation, and LDA Effect Size. All of these were performed to compare the microbiomes of horses of different keeper status, with differential abundance, beta diversity, and a Spearman’s Rank correlation used to analyze and compare age groups. Between horses who were easy and hard keepers, 32 species were found to be differentially abundant, with a definitive correlation between species and keeper status but no significance in diversity. For age, 69 taxa were found to be differentially abundant also with no significance in diversity. The taxa that were different between easy and hard keepers were from the Lachnospiraceae family, along with several others, suggesting a possible difference in nutrient availability for the horse due to the presence or absence of this family.Biological Science