Enhanced biodiversity of gut flora and feed efficiency in pond cultured tilapia under reduced frequency feeding strategies

The most abundant identified groups overall include the rotifers (50,705 counts), green algae (34,755 counts), and flowering plants (19,951 counts). Alpha and beta diversity measures were also determined for the 18S amplicons. T2 had the highest diversity (Chao1 index, mean ± SEM, 206.9 ± 33.6), followed by T1 (182.0 ± 52.4), T4 (172.0 ± 50.4), and T3 (141.5 ± 59.6) (P < 0.05). T5 had the lowest diversity measure at 123.9 ± 47.1 (Fig 5b, S1b Fig). Again, the results indicate that there are some community differ- ences between the treatments in our study with principal component 1 explaining 22.28% of the variation between communities (Fig 6c and 6d). The groupings of these samples, although with overlap, indicate that there are differences in the microbial communities between treatments. Fig 5. Chao1 diversity boxplots of microbial communities identified from the anterior intestine of Nile tilapia subjected to reduced-feeding regimes (mean ± SEM). (a) 16S rRNA (prokaryotes); (b) 18S rRNA (eukaryotes). Treatments with different letters are significantly different (P < 0.05). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236100.g005 PLOS ONE Enhanced biodiversity of gut flora and feed efficiency in pond cultured tilapia PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236100 July 23, 2020 13 / 23