Fig. 5

Functional shifts in the skin microbiome during pathogenic SFG rickettsial horizonal transmission (A–E) and in the tick microbiome during vertical transmission (F–K). The top KEGG pathways that were found to be differentially abundant between the skin microbiomes of R. raoultii-positive and R. raoultii-negative skins (A, B) and of paired tick-bitten and unbitten skins (C–E). UpSetR plot indicated the counts of differential pathways shared between pathogenic rickettsial-positive and rickettsial-negative cohorts in each developmental stage of D. silvarum (F) and I. persulcatus (I). The horizontal grey bars are the counts of differential pathways in each developmental stage. The vertical bars show the counts indicated by connected bullet points. The top KEGG pathways differentially abundant between pathogenic rickettsial positive and negative tick colonies in each stage of D. silvarum (G) and I. persulcatus (J). The differential pathways between pathogenic rickettsial positive and negative colonies of D. silvarum (H) and I. persulcatus (K) involved (grey) or not involved (white) the certain bacteria