Of these, OTU-3 (affiliated with Clostridium hiranonis TO-931T) accounted for 13.6% and 39.4% of all clones in CL-B1 and CL-B2, respectively. Followed by OTU-7 (affiliated with Ruminococcus gnavus ATCC 29149T) representing 19.6% and 5.7% of all sequences in CL-B1 and CL-B2, respectively (Table  1). On top of the five WZB117 common OTUs, CL-B2 harbored eight unique OTUs within the family Clostridiaceae compared to one unique OTU (OTU-21) for CL-B1. Other shared families within the phylum Firmicutes were the Peptococcaceae,

Eubacteriaceae, Lachnospiraceae and unclassified Clostridiales. All of these consisted of common OTUs with the exception of the Lachnospiraceae family that also comprised a single clone of OTU-40 in CL-B2. However, the phylogenetic position of OTU-40 displayed 8% nucleotide divergence with the closest type strain, Cellulosilyticum ruminicola H1T. In the Proteobacteria, only the family Enterobacteriaceae SHP099 was represented with a single common OTU-14 (affiliated with Shigella flexneri ATCC 29903T), which harbored a minority population GDC-0449 ic50 of three clones. The phylum Actinobacteria was represented by two common OTUs (OTU-17 and OTU-18) that were phylogenetically related to the Coriobacteriaceae. Comparison with available 16S rRNA sequences from captive cheetahs Our dataset of 702 quality-checked sequences was compared

with 597 full-length 16S RNA gene sequences retrieved from a large comparative microbiome study of Ley and co-workers [35] in which one faecal sample each of two captive cheetahs from

Saint Louis Zoo (St Louis, Missouri, USA) were included. Despite differences in sequence number and sequence length, both datasets were compared with PD184352 (CI-1040) taxonomic RDP annotation. In line with the present study, Bacteroidetes represented only a very marginal share (i.e. 1.3%) in Ley et al.’s dataset. At family level, the dominance of Clostridiaceae (16.5%) and Ruminococcaceae (4.0%) members was also confirmed. The share of Peptococcaceae (1.7%) and the unclassified Clostridiales Incertae Sedis (0.8%) in Ley et al.’s dataset was considerably lower compared to our dataset (5% and 18%, respectively). Two other bacterial families, also represented in the dataset of this study, made up a big part of Ley et al.’s dataset, Peptostreptococcaceae (13%) and Lachnospiraceae (11%). Taken together, only the Clostridiaceae, Lactobacillaceae and Erysipelotrichaceae families were common to the faecal microbiota of all four cheetahs included in these two studies. Discussion This study set out to determine the predominant faecal microbial communities of captive cheetahs using 16S rRNA gene clone libraries. At the onset of the study, only two animals with well-documented dietary and health records and housed according to EAZA standards were available for this study in Flanders, Belgium. Phylogenetic analysis of the pooled library set revealed a highly complex microbiota covering a broad phylogenetic spectrum.