Abstract

Tropical gar (Atractosteus tropicus), is freshwater and estuarine fish that has inhabited the Earth since the Mesozoic era, undergoing limited physiological variation ever since. This omnivorous fish is endemic to southern Mexico and part of Central America. Besides its recognized cultural and scientific relevance, the species has seen remarkable growth in its economic impact due to pisciculture. Previous studies have highlighted the role of microbial communities in fish, particularly those in the gut microbiome, in maintaining their host homeostasis or disease. In this study, we present the first report of the whole taxonomic composition of microbial communities in gut contents of adults A. tropicus, by sex (female/male) and origin (wild/cultivated). Using culture-independent techniques, we extracted metagenomic DNA that was used for high throughput 16S rDNA profiling by amplifying the V4 - V5 hypervariable regions of the bacterial gene. A total of 364,735 total paired-end reads were obtained on an Illumina MiSeq sequencing platform, belonging to 508 identified genera, with the most and least abundant are Cetobacterium, Edwardsiella, Serratia, Clostridium sensu stricto, Paludibacter and Campylobacter, Snodgrassella, Albirhodobacter, Lentilitoribacter, respectively. We detected that, by sex and origin, Proteobacteria, Fusobacteria, Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes phyla are the core gut microbiome of the adults A. tropicus. We discover the Deinococcus-Thermus phylum sequence, wildtype males only, with extremophile capacity in another freshwater fish. We also identified the species Lactococcus lactis strains CAU929 and CAU6600, Cp6 and CAU9951, Cetobacterium strain H69, Aeromonas hydrophila strains P5 and WR-5-3-2, Aeromonas sobria strain CP DC28 and Aeromonas hydrophila with probiotic potential in aquaculture within the three dominant phyla, especially in wild-type organisms.