Figure 2
Impact of R. helvetica infection on tick microbial diversity and taxa bacterial abundance. (A) Comparison of alpha-diversity with observed features index for R. helvetica-infected (orange) and pathogen-free (blue) samples (*p = 0.015). (B) Comparison of alpha-diversity with evenness index for R. helvetica-infected (orange) and pathogen-free (blue) samples (p = 0.393). (C) Comparison of beta-diversity with Bray Curtis dissimilarity index for R. helvetica-infected (orange) and pathogen-free (blue) samples. Small circles represent samples, and ellipses represent centroid position for each group (F = 5.313; p = 0.001; stress = 0.130). Beta dispersion of the two sets of samples. Small circles represent samples, and ellipses represent dispersion of samples. This test use Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA), it is used to explore and to visualize variability in a microbial community. ANOVA test was performed and showed that beta dispersion of the two sets of samples is significantly different (p = 4.775e−05). (D) Dendrogram heatmap resulting from the heatmap.2 function implemented on R studio73. The taxa were clustered based on relative abundance (calculated as clr transformed values). Each column represents the clr values for bacterial taxa per sample and per group. Each line represents bacterial taxa with significant changes between the two datasets. Color represent the clr value.