Seminar by Annie West

As global biodiversity continues to reduce at an alarming rate, threatened species are increasingly brought under intensive management or into captivity.  However, conservation management programmes are often impeded by poor animal health and low reproductive success.  Factors such as habitat degradation and captivity can significantly alter the microbiome of threatened species, though how these changes affect animal health remain poorly understood.  The overall scope of my PhD thesis was to explore how microbiome research can aid and enhance conservation management of threatened species.  To this end, I specifically explored how the gut microbiota of two threatened endemic birds of Aotearoa New Zealand, the kākāpō and takahē, varied with numerous factors, including conservation practices, using gene-targeted amplicon sequencing.