Influence of management practice on the microbiota of a critically endangered species: a longitudinal study of kākāpō chick faeces and associated nest litter

Background: The critically endangered kākāpō is a fightless, nocturnal parrot endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand. Recent eforts to describe the gastrointestinal microbial community of this threatened herbivore revealed a low-diversity microbiota that is often dominated by Escherichia-Shigella bacteria. Given the importance of associated microbial communities to animal health, and increasing appreciation of their potential relevance to threatened species conservation, we sought to better understand the development of this unusual gut microbiota profle. To this end, we conducted a longitudinal analysis of faecal material collected from kākāpō chicks during the 2019 breeding season, in addition to associated nest litter material. Results: Using an experimental approach rarely seen in studies of threatened species microbiota, we evaluated the impact of a regular conservation practice on the developing kākāpō microbiota, namely the removal of faecal material from nests. Artifcially removing chick faeces from nests had negligible impact on bacterial community diversity for either chicks or nests (p>0.05). However, the gut microbiota did change signifcantly over time as chick age increased (p<0.01), with an increasing relative abundance of Escherichia-Shigella coli over the study period and similar observations for the associated nest litter microbiota (p<0.01). Supplementary feeding substantially altered gut bacterial diversity of kākāpō chicks (p<0.01), characterised by a signifcant increase in Lactobacillus bacteria. Conclusions: Overall, chick age and hand rearing conditions had the most marked impact on faecal bacterial communities. Similarly, the surrounding nest litter microbiota changed signifcantly over time since a kākāpō chick was frst placed in the nest, though we found no evidence that removal of faecal material infuenced the bacterial communities of either litter or faecal samples. Taken together, these observations will inform ongoing conservation and management of this most enigmatic of bird ...