Fig. 2

Beta-diversity of the gut microbiota of croakers. A NMDS carried out on the weighted Unifrac distance between the farmed and wild groups. Only inter-batch pairs without significant differences are marked (AMOVA test, P > 0.01). B The explanation of variance in gut microbiomes by batch, source, sampling season, and body weight (*P < 0.05). C Heatmap shows the main OTUs relative abundance in the farmed and wild individuals. Only 24 OTUs with the mean abundance of > 0.2% and occurrence of > 20% are shown. Rows are clustered according to Pearson correlation, and OTUs are stratified into two clusters. The columns (samples) are clustered according to Euclidean distance. The total relative abundance of individuals is shown in the bar plot. Difference of the relative abundance for each taxon between farmed and wild samples was marked aside the taxon name (a and b for statistically higher in the wide and farmed samples, respectively; *P < 0.05, **P < 0.001, FDR-corrected Wilcoxon test) (D) Relative abundance of OTUs belonging to Clusters I and II in the farmed (n = 76) individuals and wild (n = 26) ones that are clustered with the majority of the farmed group