Muscarinic acetylcholine receptor antagonism attenuates sensitivity to learned values in value-based decision making

Exhaustive understanding of intestinal physiological characteristics is the critical precondition for the improvement of intestinal health and growth performance of yellow-feather broilers (YFB). As a vital part of gastrointestinal tract, the symbiotic, complex and variable microbiota have a profound effect on the nutrition, immunity, health and production of broilers. Hence, the development status of proventriculus, jejunum and cecum, and spatial heterogeneity of bacterial community in crop, proventriculus, gizzard, jejunum, cecum and rectum of adult YFB were detected in our study. The results revealed that proventriculus, jejunum and cecum of broilers are well-developed based on morphological observation. The Chao and Shannon indexes in cecum and rectum are notably higher than other sections and their microbiota structure is also distinct from foregut. Firmicutes and Lactobacillus are the predominant phylum and genus in all gastrointestinal sections, respectively. As feature species of crop, Lactobacillus spp. mainly settle in foregut, whereas some Clostridia species (unclassified Lachnospiraceae, Faecalibacterium, Romboutsia et al.) are characteristic and more abundant in cecum and rectum. Interestingly, there are two Ruminococcus torques strains positively and negatively correlated with cecum development, respectively. In a whole, our findings reveal the specialized digestive physiology and regional distribution of intestinal microbiota in YFB, which provides a reference for the future study on the improvement of growth performance and intestinal development through microbiota manipulation in yellow-feather broilers.