Fig. 5

Effect of dietary haem and/or calcium carbonate on the community distribution and diversity of the faecal microbiota as determined by 16S rRNA gene Illumina Miseq sequencing. a Relative abundance (%) per phylum according to diet. b Richness (α-diversity) measured by observed OTU number and Simpson Index according to diet. c Weighted UniFrac Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) plot representing structural changes between diets (β-diversity). d Hierarchical clustering based on the wUniFrac distances with complete linkage. CON, control diet; Ca, control diet + calcium carbonate; HEM, haem-enriched diet; HEM-Ca, haem-enriched diet + calcium carbonate. Values are presented as mean ± SEM; n = 8. P < 0.05 using ANOVA. Holm-Sidak’s multiple comparison test (b) or Kruskal-Wallis test with Dunn’s multiple comparison post-test (c): *versus CON, ^μversus Ca, ^#versus HEM