Study of microbial community in the feces of white rhinoceroses
As non-ruminant herbivores, the white rhinoceros has the strong ability to utilize fibrous plant matter due to microbial fermentation in the hindgut. So far, there has been no report using molecular techniques to study the gut microbiota of the rhinoceros. The development of next generation sequencing has led to a revolution in the characterization of complex microbial populations. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the microbial community in the feces of white rhinoceroses using the high throughput pyrosequencing analysis.