Figure 6. (A) Relative abundance of dominant bacteria family of
the total number of ASVs in muskox adults and calves. Bar plot showed
the relative abundance of adults (n=6) and calves (n=4), t-tests;
Asterisks indicate the significance of the statistical test of
differences between adults and calves (Asterisks * means p <
0.05, ** means p < 0.01, *** means p < 0.001;
Ruminococcaceae, p = 0.0004; Lachnospiraceae, p = 0.0012;
Christensenellaceae, p = 0.070; Mogibacterium_f, p = 0.009;
Akkermansiaceae, p = 0.270). Points show the relative abundance of
adults (n=4) and calves (n=4) with paired samples. (B) Distribution of
bacterial families across all fecal samples from muskox individuals.
At the phylum level, the muskox gut microbiome was dominated by
Firmicutes (on average 94.36%, 94.03%) and Verrucomicrobia (1.77%,
3.31%) respectively in both adults and calves. These two phyla
accounted for 91.16% of the total sequences from all the samples. At
the family level, we found that five families were dominant:
Ruminococcaceae (73.90%, 56.25%), Lachnospiraceae (8.27%, 24.00%),
Christensenellaceae (8.28%, 5.76%), Mogibacterium_f (0.65%, 2.86%),
and Akkermansiaceae (1.72%, 3.30%) (Figure 6AB). Three microbial
families were significantly different in their relative abundances
between muskox adults and calves (Ruminococcaceae, p = 0.0004;
Lachnospiraceae, p = 0.001; Mogibacterium_f, p = 0.009; t-tests; Figure
6A). Although the four pairs of adult and calves did not show
significances (paired t-tests; indicated by colored lines in Figure 6A),
Ruminococcaceae and Christensenellaceae showed consistent increases and
Lachnospiraceae, Mogibacterium_f and Akkermansiaceae showed consistent
decreases in all pairs.