Survival status of Penaeus vannamei is associated with the homeostasis and assembly process of the intestinal bacterial community

Disease often occurs randomly in high-density shrimp farming, which leads to large differences in shrimp survival rates. However, the microbial ecologic mechanism underlying differences in the survival rate of farmed shrimp remains unclear. In this study, we regrouped the samples into high survival (HS) group and low survival (LS) group according to the survival rate of shrimp to elucidate the microbial mechanism. The results showed that the relative abundance of Vibrionaceae was mainly enriched in the LS group, and the dominated taxon OTU661 (Operational Taxonomic Unit 661) was significantly and negatively associated with the survival rate. The relative importance of OTU661 accounted for about 24% in causing differences of shrimp survival rate. The intestinal bacterial communities of the HS and LS groups were fit to a neutral distribution model, but the neutral process was significantly reduced in the LS group, compared to that in the HS group. Co-occurrence network analysis found that the interactions of the bacterial communities were more complex and stable in the HS group than the LS group, which might be an important factor for influencing the survival rate of shrimp. This study investigated the potential reasons for the differences in the shrimp survival rates from the aspects of microbiome homeostasis and assembly process, which might be helpful to develop a micro-ecological regulation method for healthy shrimp farming.