Occurrence of Bifidobacteriaceae in herbivorous primate Theropithecus gelada

Primates in general exhibit a wide dietary diversity, enabling them to occupy various ecological niches. It is well know that the diet greatly influences microbial diversity of gut microbiota and generally, a fibre rich diet promotes the growth of microbial groups producing short fatty acids, thus playing an important beneficial role in the host health. The Bifidobacteriaceae are grampositive, pleomorphically branched, non-motile, non-spore-forming that constitute a significant proportion of the microbiota in the gut. They can be grouped on the basis of one of six different ecological niches that they occupy: the human intestine, oral cavity, food, the animal gastrointestinal tract, the insect intestine, and sewage. Although nearly all primates are to some extent omnivorous, most primates can be primarily categorized as fruit-, insect- or leaf-eaters. However, in all primate diversity, there is only one species of modern primate that feeds on particularly nutrient-poor plant material is the gelada baboon (Theropithecus gelada). Native to the highlands of Ethiopia, they subsist largely as grazers, the only modern primate species to do so. Aim of this work was to investigate the occurrence of Bifidobacteriaceae in six adult males of Theropithecus gelada housed in Parco Natura Viva Garda Zoological Park (Bussolengo, Verona, Italy). Different selective media were tested for their suitability in the isolation of the Bifidobacteriaceae strains. All sixteen isolates were clones as resulted from BOX-PCR fingerprinting, a technique allowing the molecular typing. Comparative analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed low sequence similarity of isolates to known Bifidobacteriaceae and the highest similarity (96.1 %) was found to Alloscardovia criceti. Therefore the isolates are phylogenetically not closely related to known species and are possible novel species in the genus Alloscardovia of the Bifidobacteriaceae family. For the first time member of Bifidobacteriaceae family have been found in Theropithecus gelada and further studies are needed to better analyse the importance of their presence in these very peculiar group of monkeys.