Fig. 3

Both huddling and cold alter the diversity and composition of caecal microbiota. a Phylogenetic diversity (PD)—whole tree analysis for the samples from CH (cold huddling), CS (cold separated), WH (warm huddling), and WS (warm separated) voles after 3 weeks of acclimation. b, c Principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) plots based on unweighted and weighted UniFrac distance. Each symbol represents a single sample of caecal contents from the four groups. d, e Relative abundance at phylum and family levels in caecal microbiota community of the four groups. f Differential bacterial taxonomy selected by LEfSe analysis with LDA score > 2 in caecal microbiota community of the four groups. g Cladogram representing taxa enriched in caecal microbiota community of the four groups detected by the LEfSe tool. Differences were represented by the color of the most abundant class (red indicating CH group, green CS group, blue WH group, purple WS group, and yellow non-significant). The diameter of each circle is proportional to the taxon’s abundance. h–m Relative abundance of Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria, Tenericutes, TM7, Lachnospiraceae, and Veillonellaceae in caecal microbiota community of the four groups. In panels a and h–m, the white star indicates the mean of data, and the whisker indicates the most extreme data point within 1.5*(75th–25th percentile) of the median. Data points outside of the whiskers are shown as crosses