Development of the faecal microbiota in foals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY: The intestinal microbiota is a complex polymicrobial ecosystem that exerts extremely important roles in the development and maintenance of health. Recently, as new sequencing technologies have become more available, there has been a revolution in the understanding of the equine intestinal microbiota. However, studies characterising the pioneer intestinal bacteria colonising foals and its development over time are still limited. OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this study were to characterise the intestinal bacterial colonisation of newborn foals and to follow individual animals over time until age 9 months. STUDY DESIGN: Longitudinal study. METHODS: Eleven pregnant mares from one farm were enrolled and faecal samples were collected longitudinally from mares and foals during their first day post partum and again periodically until foals were age 9 months. The V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified and sequenced using the Illumina MiSeq platform. RESULTS: Newborn foals had a rich and diverse bacterial community, which was mainly comprised of the Firmicutes phylum with several low abundant genera being unique at this age. Foals aged 2-30 days had significantly decreased diversity compared to older animals, with the majority of organisms classified as Akkermansia spp. After 60 days of life, the intestinal microbiota structure tended to remain stable, but differences in community membership were still present between 9-month-old animals and mature mares. Several differences at the phylum level were observed between different ages, including a higher abundance of Fibrobacteres after weaning. CONCLUSIONS: The intestinal microbiota of the equine newborn is already complex by the first day of life. Microbiota adaptation occurs during the first month and the microbiota of foals older than 60 days resemble the mother's microbiota, although differences in community membership are still present.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.023 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".