Fig 1.
Geographic locations of three hydrothermal vents along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR).
Hydrothermal vent locations from where Rimicaris exoculata were sampled for this study.
Table 1.
Alpha diversity indices, species count and species richness (Chao1 and standard error).
Table 2.
Testing for homogeneity of bacterial communities.
Testing was performed using Bray-Curtis Similarity Index of Analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) and Permutational Analysis of Variance (PERMANOVA). Significance was detected at p < 0.05 for vents and life stages.
Fig 2.
Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analyses for Rimicaris exoculata bacterial communities.
(A) Clustering pattern by vents, with colored circles representing the vent location from where each sample was collected. (B) Clustering pattern by vent, with colored shapes and letters denoting the specific categories for each sample. Each MDS was implemented using Bray-Curtis similarity matrices, calculated in PAST [34]. The 95% concentration ellipses estimate a region where 95% of the population points are expected to fall. “Orange” indicates juveniles, whose carapace is an orange color.
Fig 3.
Frequencies of identified bacterial classes across the three life stages at Logatchev.
Four main classes are identified across Rimicaris exoculata life stages. “Other classes” contain nine or more less common groups.
Table 3.
Qualitative results for digestive tract sequences assigned to the most common operation taxonomic units (OTUs).
Common OTUs are defined as OTUs with >500 sequences assigned. The table illustrates the OTU name, assigned taxonomic identities, number of sequences, and the relative abundance of each OTU at each vent, as a percentage.
Fig 4.
Geographic networks for operational taxonomic units (OTUs) assigned to bacterial classes Deferribacteres and Mollicutes.
(A) OTU “denovo 10553”, assigned to Deferribacteres, was composed of 504 sequences. (B) OTU “denovo 6152”, assigned to Mollicutes, was composed of 691 sequences. Networks were drawn with median-joining calculation to illustrate the clustering of haplotypes; links are not proportional to the number of mutations and therefore, do not illustrate evolutionary divergence between the nodes.
Fig 5.
Geographic network for an operational taxonomic unit (OTU) assigned to bacterial class Epsilonproteobacteria (denovo 10123).
OTU “denovo 10123” was composed of 668 sequences. Network was drawn with median-joining calculation to illustrate the clustering of haplotypes; links are not proportional to the number of mutations and therefore, do not illustrate evolutionary divergence between the nodes.