Washington: Scientists in Australia have discovered how to save starving koalas whose fussy eating habits make them vulnerable to habitat loss: by feeding them poo.
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A team of researchers used fecal transplants in the form of orally ingested capsules to alter the microbes in the marsupials’ guts, thus allowing them to eat a wider range of eucalypts.
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Their work was described in a study published in the journal Animal Microbiome on Tuesday.
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Michaela Blyton of the University of Queensland’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, the paper’s lead author, said she was inspired to act after a devastating drop in the population of koalas in Cape Otway in Victoria.
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“In 2013, the koala population reached very high densities, leading them to defoliate their preferred food tree species, manna gum,” Blyton said.
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This in turn led to a 70 percent mortality due to starvation – but they did not start feeding on a less preferred tree species called messmate even though some koalas feed only on messmate.
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“This led me and colleague Dr Ben Moore at Western Sydney University to wonder if the microbes present in koalas’ guts – their microbiomes – were limiting which species they could eat, and if we could allow them to expand their diet with faecal inoculations,” said Blyton.
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The team caught wild koalas that fed exclusively on manna gum, then fed them poo from messmate eating koalas packaged into acid-resistant capsules.
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The capsules successfully altered the manna gum eating koalas’ biomes, allowing them to eat the messmate.
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“Koalas may naturally have trouble adapting to new diets when their usual food trees become over-browsed or after being moved to a new location,” said Blyton.
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“This study provides a proof of concept for the use of encapsulated faecal material to successfully introduce and establish new microbes in koalas’ guts.”
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