Bacterial density rather than diversity correlates with hatching success across different avian species Peralta-Sánchez, Juan Manuel Martín Platero, Antonio Manuel Wegener-Parfrey, Laura Martínez Bueno, Manuel Rodríguez Ruano, Sonia Navas-Molina, José Antonio Vázquez-Baeza, Yoshiki Martín-Gálvez, David Martín-Vivaldi Martínez, Manuel Lorenzo Ibáñez Álamo, Juan Diego Knight, Rob Soler Cruz, Juan José ARISA Avian community Bacterial community Bacterial density Comparative analysis Eggshells Hatching success High-throughput sequencing Illumina HiSeq Phylogenetic General Least Square We thank Rosario Millán for technical assistance; Liesbeth de Neve, María Roldán, Juan Rodríguez-Ruiz, Deseada Parejo, Magdalena Ruiz-Rodríguez and Carlos Navarro for sampling nests of some species. We also thank the efforts and comments of two anonymous reviewers that have greatly improved the manuscript. Bird and egg manipulations were performed under the authorization of Junta de Andalucía - Consejería de Medio Ambiente (permit No. SGYB-AFR-CMM, February 19th 2007). Bacterial communities within avian nests are considered an important determinant of egg viability, potentially selecting for traits that confer embryos with protection against trans-shell infection. A high bacterial density on the eggshell increases hatching failure, whether this effect could be due to changes in bacterial community or just a general increase in bacterial density. We explored this idea using intra- and interspecific comparisons of the relationship between hatching success and eggshell bacteria characterized by culture and molecular techniques (fingerprinting and high-throughput sequencing). We collected information for 152 nests belonging to 17 bird species. Hatching failures occurred more frequently in nests with higher density of aerobic mesophilic bacteria on their eggshells. Bacterial community was also related to hatching success, but only when minority bacterial operational taxonomic units were considered. These findings support the hypothesis that bacterial density is a selective agent of embryo viability, and hence a proxy of hatching failure only within species. Although different avian species hold different bacterial densities or assemblages on their eggs, the association between bacteria and hatching success was similar for different species. This result suggests that interspecific differences in antibacterial defenses are responsible for keeping the hatching success at similar levels in different species. 2018-11-23T09:22:29Z 2018-11-23T09:22:29Z 2018-02-09 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Peralta-Sánchez, Juan Manuel; et. al. Bacterial density rather than diversity correlates with hatching success across different avian species. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 2018, Vol. 94, No. 3 fiy022 [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/53913] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/53913 10.1093/femsec/fiy022 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España Oxford University Press