ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbial Symbioses
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Role of Gut Microbiota in Mediating the Physiological and Pathological Effects of Pollutant Exposure in Aquatic AnimalsView all articles
Triclocarban exposure at environmentally relevant concentrations perturbs the gut microbiota and metabolic profile in Rana taihangensis (Anura, Ranidae) tadpoles
Provisionally accepted
Ruinan Zhao1Pengyuan Liu1Yaoyang Wu1Hongyan Bi1Jiaoying He1
Jie Zhang2
Yan-Fu Qu3
Xiaohong Chen1
Zhuo Chen1*- 1College of Life Sciences, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
- 2College of Fisheries, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
- 3Herpetological Research Center, College of Life Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
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The antibacterial agent triclocarban (TCC) poses a significant threat to aquatic ecosystems and its impact on amphibians remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated itsacute and chronic effects on Rana taihangensis tadpoles at environmentally relevant concentrations (i.e., 5, 15 and 45 μg/L) using an integrated approach combining morphology, gut microbiome, and non-targeted metabolomic analyses. The acute toxicity tests for 96 h revealed that TCC had a lethal concentration (LC50) value of 169.863 µg/L for R. taihangensis tadpoles. Chronic exposure resulted in reduced body condition score across all the three TCC-treated groups compared to the control. Gut microbiome analysis revealed that TCC exposure significantly altered the community composition at both phylum (e.g., Pseudomonadota and Fusobacteriota) and genus (e.g., Cetobacterium and Citrobacter) levels. In addition, several metabolites (e.g., 20-carboxy-leukotriene B4, 11b-PGF2a, and leukotriene E4) associated with immune response and neural signaling were significantly perturbed in TCC-exposed tadpoles. Interestingly, correlation analysis indicated a significant relationship between specific metabolite changes and shifts in gut microbiota. Overall, our findings demonstrated that TCC exposure adversely affects the growth indexes, gut microbial composition and metabolites in R. taihangensis tadpoles, and the present study will provide new insights into the ecotoxicological risks of TCC and enhance the understanding of its mechanisms of toxicity in aquatic organisms.
Keywords: amphibian, Rana taihangensis, Triclocarban, Gut Microbiota, Metabolome
Received: 06 Nov 2025; Accepted: 29 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao, Liu, Wu, Bi, He, Zhang, Qu, Chen and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhuo Chen
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