Table 1.
Signalment and medical histories of cats enrolled in this study.
Fig 1.
Results from Kruskal-Wallis tests comparing alpha diversity results by body site in healthy cats.
Results from pairwise Kruskal-Wallis tests on body sites in healthy cats at a rarefaction of 3100 sequences per sample. Asterisks indicate sites that were found to be significantly different from at least 8 other body sites.
Table 2.
Alpha diversity averages measures at 3100 sequences per sample for healthy cats.
Fig 2.
Principal coordinate analysis plots comparing body sites sampled in healthy cats.
Principal coordinate analysis plots of weighted UniFrac, unweighted UniFrac, and Bray-Curtis distance matrices. Significant clustering was seen with all three measures of beta diversity.
Fig 3.
Effect of cat number and body site on community structure.
ANOSIM of beta diversity distance matrices resulted in the shown R values. R values range from -1 to 1, with values closer to 0 indicating compared groups are very similar. Allergic cats clustered most by individual cat while healthy cats clustered most by body site.
Fig 4.
Relative taxa abundance at each body site sampled in healthy cats.
Average relative taxa abundances at each body site (axilla, chin, conjunctiva, dorsal nose, ear canal, groin, interdigital, lumbar, nostril, oral, pre-aural space, and reproductive organs) sampled in healthy cats. Four phyla (Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria) accounted for 97.5% of the bacteria found in the samples.
Table 3.
Alpha diversity averages at 2900 sequences per sample for allergic cats.
Fig 5.
Principal coordinate analysis plots for allergic cat samples by individual.
Principal coordinate analysis plots of weighted UniFrac, unweighted UniFrac, and Bray-Curtis distance matrices. Samples clustered strongly by individual cat with all 3 beta diversity metrics.
Table 4.
Alpha diversity averages at 2900 sequences per sample for health status.
Fig 6.
Relative taxa abundance at each body site sampled in healthy and allergic cats.
A. Average relative taxa abundances at each body site (axilla, ear canal, groin, interdigital, lumbar, and nostril) sampled in healthy and allergic cats. B. Individual relative taxa abundances in every site sampled in healthy and allergic cats.
Fig 7.
LEfSe plot of healthy vs allergic cat samples.
Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) plot of healthy vs allergic cat samples. Allergic cat samples had more Staphylococcus while samples from healthy cats had more Oxalobacteriaceae and Porphyromonadaceae.