Host genetics influence the rumen microbiota and heritable rumen microbial features associate with feed efficiency in cattle

Table 1 Heritability estimates of rumen microbial abundance, diversity indices¹, and ratios between dominant microbial groups

Rumen microbial taxonomic features	Heritability (h² ± SE)
Bacteria
16S rRNA gene copy number (log10)	0.16 ± 0.07
Chao1 index	0.09 ± 0.07
Shannon index	0.23 ± 0.09
Simpson index	0.19 ± 0.08
PCoA1 (6.88% variation)	0.12 ± 0.07
PCoA2 (5.13% variation)	0.25 ± 0.09
PCoA3 (3.33% variation)	0.08 ± 0.06
PCoA4 (2.75% variation)	0.00 ± 0.00
PCoA5 (2.40% variation)	0.15 ± 0.09
Archaea
16S rRNA gene copy number (log10)	0.05 ± 0.06
Chao1 index	0.00 ± 0.05
Shannon index	0.04 ± 0.06
Simpson index	0.05 ± 0.06
PCoA1 (35.19% variation)	0.17 ± 0.09
PCoA2 (22.31% variation)	0.17 ± 0.08
PCoA3 (6.18% variation)	0.05 ± 0.06
PCoA4 (4.58% variation)	0.00 ± 0.00
PCoA5 (2.76% variation)	0.06 ± 0.06
Ratio²
Archaea to bacteria	0.04 ± 0.06
Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes	0.15 ± 0.07
Mbb. gottschalkii to Mbb. ruminantium	0.17 ± 0.08

¹To estimate these α- and β-diversity indices, the number of bacterial and archaeal sequences per sample were normalized to 2000 and 500, respectively. α-diversity indices were calculated at the genus level for bacterial communities and at the species level for archaeal communities. Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA) was conducted using Bray-Curtis dissimilarity matrices
²Abundance from qPCR and relative abundance were both log10-transformed before we calculated these ratios

ISSN: 2049-2618