Table 1.
Demographic data associated with horses included in the study.
Fig 1.
Richness of the luminal and mucosal equine gut microbiota.
Bar charts showing the mean (± sem) number of unique 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequences (A,B) or operational taxonomic units (OTUs; C,D) detected in luminal contents (A,C) or mucosa (B,D) of samples collected from dorsal stomach (DS), antral stomach (AS), jejunum (Je), ileum (Il), cecum (Ce), ventral colon (VC), or dorsal colon (DC) of nine healthy adult horses. Bars within a chart marked with like letters are significantly different (p < 0.05, ANOVA).
Fig 2.
Relative abundance of phyla in luminal and mucosal equine gut microbiota.
Bar charts showing relative abundance of phyla detected in luminal contents (A) and mucosa (B) of samples collected from dorsal stomach, antral stomach, jejunum, ileum, cecum, ventral colon, and dorsal colon of nine healthy adult horses, displayed in the same order in each chart and in each GIT region (animal IDs listed below bars). Samples returning fewer than 1000 sequences not shown; legend at right.
Fig 3.
Relative abundance of operational taxonomic units in luminal and mucosal equine gut microbiota.
Bar charts showing relative abundance of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) detected in luminal contents (A) and mucosa (B) of samples collected from dorsal stomach, antral stomach, jejunum, ileum, cecum, ventral colon, and dorsal colon of nine healthy adult horses, displayed in the same order in each chart and in each GIT region (animal IDs listed below bars). Samples returning fewer than 1000 sequences not shown; dominant OTUs in upper gastrointestinal tract (GIT) labeled at upper right, legend for dominant OTUs in lower GIT at lower right.
Fig 4.
Separate principal component analysis of luminal and mucosal gut microbial populations.
Principal component analysis of microbial communities detected in luminal contents (A) and mucosa (B) of samples collected from dorsal stomach, antral stomach, jejunum, ileum, cecum, ventral colon, and dorsal colon of nine healthy adult horses; legend at right.
Table 2.
Pairwise PERMANOVA of Bray-Curtis similarity indices between luminal samples.
Table 3.
Pairwise PERMANOVA of Bray-Curtis similarity indices between mucosal samples.
Fig 5.
Combined principal component analysis of luminal and mucosal gut microbial populations.
Principal component analysis of microbial communities detected in luminal contents and mucosa of samples collected from dorsal stomach, antral stomach, jejunum, ileum, cecum, ventral colon, and dorsal colon of nine healthy adult horses, shown as PC1 versus PC2 (A) and PC1 versus PC3 (B); legend at right.