Table 1.
Macronutrient profile of a commercially available Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) feed tested maintenance diets fed to domestic short hair kittens (Felis catus).
Figure 1.
The effects of Diet A or Diet B on growth rates of kittens.
Data are reported as means ± SEM.
Table 2.
Treatment groups for determining the effects of pre-weaning (in utero and during lactation) and post-weaning diet on intestinal microbiota in the domestic kitten (Felis catus; n = 5 per treatment).
Figure 2.
The effects of Diet A or Diet B on faecal microbial diversity in pregnant queens (Felis catus).
The rarefaction curves based on the Chao1 diversity index (at 97% sequence identity cut-off) indicate that faecal bacterial communities of cats fed Diet A (---; n = 3 cats) were less diverse than those of cats fed Diet B (–; n = 4 cats). Data are reported as means ± SEM.
Table 3.
The effect of diets on the bacterial phyla (% of total sequences) in faecal samples of pregnant female cats (Felis catus) fed Diet A (n = 3) or Diet B (n = 4).
Table 4.
The effects of pre-weaning (gestation and lactation) or post-weaning diets (Diet A or B) on the bacterial phyla (proportion of total sequences) present in faecal samples of the domestic kitten (Felis catus; n = 5 per treatment).
Table 5.
The effects of pre-weaning (gestation and lactation) or post-weaning (Diet A or Diet B) diets on the different bacterial genera (proportion of total sequences) present in at least 5 faecal samples from the domestic kitten (Felis catus; n = 5 per treatment) at a level of 0.5% or higher.
Figure 3.
The effects of pre- and post-weaning feeding of Diet A or Diet B on faecal microbial diversity in kittens (Felis catus).
The rarefaction curves based on the Chao1 diversity index (at 97% sequence identity cut-off) indicate that faecal bacterial communities of kittens fed Diet B (A-B and B-B; n = 10) were more diverse than those fed Diet A (A-A and B-A, n = 10). Pre-weaning diet did not have an effect on community diversity in the kitten. Data are reported as means ± SEM.
Figure 4.
Principal Coordinate Analysis plot of weighted Unifrac phylogenetic distances showing the similarities between bacterial communities of queens fed Diet A or Diet B and their offspring fed Diet A (B-A or A-A) or Diet B (B-B or A-B) post-weaning.
Percentage of variation captured by each component indicated on axes.
Figure 5.
Principal Coordinate Analysis plot of unweighted Unifrac phylogenetic distances showing the similarities between bacterial communities of queens fed Diet A or Diet B and their offspring fed Diet A (B-A or A-A) or Diet B (B-B or A-B) post-weaning.
Percentage of variation captured by each component indicated on axes.
Figure 6.
Correlation heatmaps of faecal microbiota and gene expression in (A) blood, (B) adipose fat tissue, and (C) reproductive tissue.
Cell colour indicates strength and direction of correlation, with blue representing maximal negative correlation and red representing maximal positive correlation.
Table 6.
The effects of pre-weaning (gestation and lactation) or post-weaning diets (Diet A or Diet B) on blood and tissue gene expression levels (relative fluorescence units) in the domestic kitten (Felis catus).