Objective Various intestinal microorganisms have been found in earthworms, among which the bacterial community plays an important role for earthworms to adapt to different habitats. However, the research on the intestinal flora of earthworms mostly focuses on cultured earthworms. This research will be on wild earthworms.
Method Metaphire vulgaris in cucumber and pepper field at Cangzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Hebei Province were collected in order to analyze the differences of the intestinal flora of wild earthworms in different habitats, and their intestinal bacterial communities were analyzed by high-throughput sequencing. The total DNA of earthworm intestinal microorganisms was extracted, the V3-V4 region of 16S rRNA Gene was specifically amplified, and the two terminal sequencings was carried out by Illumina hiseq2500 sequencing platform. Then OTU (operational taxonomic unit) was classified. The species composition analysis, Alpha and Beta diversity analysis, and inter-sample group statistical analysis were carried out.
Result The results showed that the dominant bacteria with relative abundance greater than 1% of CZM (earthworm from pepper field) and CZH (earthworm from cucumber field) were 12 and 13. Proteobacteria is the bacterium Phylum with the highest relative abundance of gut microbes. At the same time, some unclassified bacteria were also found, and there were more unclassified bacteria in CZH than CZM. In addition, the abundance of CZH and CZM intestinal bacteria with richness in the top 30 had different positions on the phylogenetic tree.
Conclusion This study showed that there were differences in intestinal microorganisms of the same earthworm species living in different vegetable environments, which will provide a reference for understanding the intestinal bacterial community composition of wild-type earthworm species.
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