Analysis of the Microbiota in the Fecal Material of Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta)

We used high-throughput sequencing analysis, which targeted the hypervariable V3-V4 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene, to investigate the microbiota in fecal material from ten wild painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) captured in southeastern Wisconsin. The most predominant bacterial phylum detected in all samples was the Firmicutes (relative abundance for all samples 96.4% to 68.3%). The next most predominant phylum was Bacteroidetes (relative abundance for all samples 23.9% to 7.8%) in eight samples. Fusobacteria (relative abundance for all samples 22.2% to 0%) was the second most predominant in the other two samples.