Deqing Zhuoga ^1,2*, Li Zhang^1,2,4, Rais Ahmed ³, Xinyan Chen^1,2, Mikhlid H. Almutairi⁵, Jia Wang⁶

Tibetan sheep are economically important and adapted to high altitude animals of the Qinghai Xizang Plateau, characterized by hypoxia, low temperature, and limited forage quality. Despite their importance, the fecal fungal microbiota of different plateau sheep breeds and their potential role in altitude adaptation remain largely unexplored. Here, we conducted ITS1 amplicon sequencing to comprehensively compare the cecal fungal communities among three representative breeds: Pengbo semi-fine-wool sheep (P), Elephant male semi-fine-wool sheep (XX, and Holba sheep (HRB) (n = 6 males per breed, 4 years old). From 18 cecal samples, we generated 1 347 654 raw and 1 227 756 high quality filtered sequences. In addition to sufficient sequencing depth confirmed by rarefaction curves, alpha diversity indices, including Pieloue (P<0.01), Shannon (P<0.01), and Simpson (P<0.0001), significantly declined with increasing altitudes. Comparatively, beta-diversity analyses (PCoA, UPGMA, and ANOSIM) revealed clear, statistically significant separation among the three breeds (P<0.01). LEfSe and t-tests identified three phyla (Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, Mucoromycota) and 21 genera as robust biomarkers, including genera of Caecomyces, Myceliophthora, Naganishia, Leptobacillium, Ustilago, Filobasidium, Mucor, Wallemia, etc. Our results may give novel insights for a better understanding of the high-altitude adaptability of plateau animals.

To Cite This Article: Zhuoga D, Zhang L, Ahmed R, Chen X, Almutairi MH and Wang J, 2026. Fungal microbiota comparison analysis of different breeds of plateau sheep. Pak Vet J, 46(5): 1349-1356. http://dx.doi.org/10.29261/pakvetj/2026.121