Fig. 2

Impact of B. afzelii infection on tick microbiota diversity and community assembly. a Faith’s phylogenetic diversity and b Pielou’s evenness indexes were used to measure the richness and evenness, respectively, of microbiota of ticks fed on B. afzelii-infected and uninfected mice (Kruskal–Wallis, p > 0.05). c, d Beta diversity of tick microbiota were analyzed with the c Jaccard and d Weighted Unifrac indexes to measure the similarity between the bacterial communities in the different experimental conditions (PERMANOVA, p < 0.05). e, f Bacterial co-occurrence networks were inferred from 16SrRNA gene sequences obtained from ticks fed on e uninfected and f B. afzelii-infected mice. g Volcano plot showing the differential microbial abundance in tick microbiota from the uninfected and B. afzelii groups. Red points represent the taxa whose abundance are significantly lower in B. afzelii group compared to the uninfected one. h Heatmap representing the abundance (expressed as CLR) of the 14 taxa whose abundance were lower in B. afzelii group. i, j Sub-networks of the local connectivity of Escherichia-Shigella were extracted from the i uninfected and j B. afzelii co-occurrence networks. Nodes represent bacterial taxa and edges stand for co-occurrence correlation (SparCC > 0.75 or <  − 0.75). k Venn diagram showing the number of bacterial taxa that are common or unique among the neighbors directly connected to Escherichia-Shigella in the uninfected and B. afzelii groups. l Direction of associations of common direct neighbor to the taxon Escherichia-Shigella between the uninfected and B. afzelii groups. Red edges indicate positive co-occurrence associations in both groups. Rarified table of ASVs, used to measure the alpha and beta diversity, and taxonomic table were obtained from 16S rRNA gene sequences from ticks fed on uninfected mice (n = 10 individual larvae) and B. afzelii-infected mice (n = 10 individual larvae). Node size of co-occurrence networks or sub-networks is proportional to the eigenvector centrality value and node color is based on the modularity class. Thus, nodes with the same color belong to the same cluster. Positive and negative interactions between co-occurring bacteria are represented by the dark red and green edges, respectively. Only nodes with at least one connecting edge are displayed