Scientists are Looking at Fecal Transplants to Aid in Wildlife Conservation

Koalas are known to be very picky eaters as they only eat a certain species of eucalyptus leaves.  Sometimes, they would even pick from which tree to get the leaves, and eat about 500 grams of their preselection per day.  Because of this pickiness, the adorable bears are potentially putting themselves at risk.  In 2013, Australian government had to take specific measures to address how koalas who preferred to eat the leaves of Eucalyptus viminalis, or manna gum, had essentially 'killed' the trees by consuming them.  And even with the availability of Eucalyptus obliqua, or messmate, a lot of koalas chose to starve to death.

Researchers have recently reported in an issue of Animal Microbiome that microbes from fecal transplants could help koalas expand their meal selection.  They first found messmate-eating koalas and collected their stool and then extracted the microbes from it.  These were then packaged in acid-resistant capsules with the hypothesis that the intestinal bacteria altered the microbial communities in the gut of manna gum-eating koalas.  The capsules gave microbes from koalas who only ate messmate leaves to those who only wanted manna gum. 

Out of 12 koalas, six were given capsules loaded with microbes from messmate eaters and the other six were given capsules loaded with microbes from manna gum eaters, to act as the controlled variable.  This was done for nine days, followed by monitoring of their food intake and microbes for the next 18 days.

The researchers found that their experiment resulted in the increase of messmate ingestion of recipient koalas.  Animal ecologist and University of Queensland microbiologist, Michaela Blyton, explained the relationship of the amount of variation of the microbial community with the amount of messmate the koalas ate.  "The more that changed, the more messmate they ate," she said, "which suggests that the microbiome is influencing what the koalas are able to eat."

Nutritional ecologist at the University of Utah, Denise Dearing, says that this kind of experiment and its results may help in the conservation of endangered wildlife.  "The work is really creative," she said. "We may be able to use fecal transplants to help conserve endangered species."

On an additional note, Blyton said that the pills could help some koalas recover from dosages of antibiotics since many of the koalas in northern Australia are given antibiotics to treat chlamydia.