The barn owl Tyto alba is a medium-sized nocturnal raptor, predator of small mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects, distributed all over the world. Environmentally uncontaminated wild barn owl pellets are hard and rare to find and provide a natural matrix for biological investigations. Different solutions for collecting wild barn owl pellets at low environmental contamination are proposed. These solutions are based on a daily sanitized surface for sample retrieval, followed by rapid analysis. As an example of the possible investigations that can be carried out on these matrices, with the aim to highlight the relevance of the obtained results also from a biotechnological perspective. Two rare pellet samples from wild barn owl T. alba, appropriately collected in a rural area of central Italy, were analyzed using culture-dependent, molecular (Next-Generation Sequencing), and enzyme profile analysis techniques. The osteological observations of the bone remains provided useful information for identifying the prey, mainly rodents (Apodemus sp.). Under our experimental conditions, the results revealed both a wide heterogeneity between the pellet microbiota and a great percentage of uncultured bacteria not classified at the species level. Furthermore, microbial cultures of Malbranchea albolutea, Debaryomyces hansenii, and Lactobacillus sp. were isolated and studied. Finally, we quantified the environmental impact of our experimental work in terms of CO2 equivalent release. To compensate for the release of 300 kg/CO2 eq., three Taxus. baccata L. were planted. This work provides a starting point for developing an effective strategy to study and characterize wild barn owl pellets at low environmental contamination. It presents a simple and easy technique/protocol for collecting the pellets. The microbiota heterogeneity found in the two analyzed samples suggests that barn owl pellets can represent a potential natural reservoir for the discovery of new microorganisms to be used in various biotechnological applications. This could open the way for further large-scale studies on a greater number of samples and populations.

中文翻译：

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低环境污染野生仓鸮颗粒的收集方法及微生物和生态调查建议

谷仓猫头鹰 Tyto alba 是一种中型夜间猛禽，捕食小型哺乳动物、鸟类、爬行动物和昆虫，分布于世界各地。环境未受污染的野生仓鸮颗粒很难且罕见，并且为生物学研究提供了天然基质。提出了在低环境污染下收集野生仓鸮颗粒的不同解决方案。这些解决方案基于每日消毒的表面进行样本检索，然后进行快速分析。作为可以对这些基质进行的可能研究的一个例子，目的是从生物技术的角度强调所获得的结果的相关性。使用培养依赖性分子（下一代测序）和酶谱分析技术对在意大利中部农村地区适当收集的野生仓鸮 T. alba 的两种稀有颗粒样品进行了分析。对骨头遗骸的骨学观察为识别猎物（主要是啮齿动物（黑线姬鼠））提供了有用的信息。在我们的实验条件下，结果揭示了颗粒微生物群之间存在广泛的异质性，并且大量未培养的细菌未在物种水平上进行分类。此外，Malbranchea albolutea、Debaryomyces hansenii 和 Lactobacillus sp. 的微生物培养物。被隔离和研究。最后，我们根据二氧化碳当量释放量量化了实验工作对环境的影响。为了补偿 300 公斤/二氧化碳当量的释放，需要种植三株红豆杉。种植了 baccata L.。这项工作为制定有效策略来研究和表征低环境污染下的野生仓鸮颗粒提供了一个起点。它提供了一种简单易用的收集颗粒的技术/协议。两个分析样品中发现的微生物群异质性表明，仓鸮颗粒可以代表发现用于各种生物技术应用的新微生物的潜在天然库。这可能为对更多样本和人群进行进一步大规模研究开辟道路。