RESEARCH ARTICLE
A Comparison of the Bacterial Microflora Found on the Surface of American Kestrel and House Wren Eggs
Beth A. Potte1, 2, *, Emily J. Hyde1, Holly N. Pier1, Michael A. Rutter1, Margaret A. Voss2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2014Volume: 7
First Page: 40
Last Page: 48
Publisher Id: TOOENIJ-7-40
DOI: 10.2174/1874453201407010040
Article History:
Received Date: 03/03/2014Revision Received Date: 24/06/2014
Acceptance Date: 4/07/2014
Electronic publication date: 08/9/2014
Collection year: 2014
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
It is generally accepted that avian eggs acquire a microflora during ovipositioning. The goal of this study was to identify and compare the eggshell microflora of two avian species, House Wrens and American Kestrels. Differences in the nesting habitats and incubation behavior of these species suggest that their eggshell microfloras also should differ. Culture-dependent techniques were combined with sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene to identify bacteria in samples taken from American Kestrel eggs during late incubation. These data were compared to previously collected data from House Wren eggs. In both studies, bacteria were isolated from three different phyla, Actinobacteria, Firmicutes and Proteobacteria. The eggshell microflora of Kestrels was dominated by bacteria in the Actinobacteria and Firmicutes phyla during late incubation, whereas the eggshell microflora of House Wrens was dominated by bacteria in the Gamma-Proteobacteria subphylum during pre- and late-incubation and bacteria within the Fimicutes phylum during early incubation. Actinobacteria genera on House Wren and American Kestrel eggshells differed, but the prominent genera in the Gamma- Proteobacteria and Firmicutes phyla, Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus, respectively, were similar between bird species. Thus, our results suggest that the microflora of avian eggshells have both variable (i.e., phyla) and conserved (i.e., specific genera) aspects of bacterial diversity.
