Fig. 1

Bacterial microbiome diversity associated with fiddler crab gills. a Sampling locations and representative images of crab species sampled (Austruca albimana [AA], Cranuca inversa [CI], Tubuca urvillei [TU], Austruca occidentalis [AO], and Paraleptuca chlorophthalmus [PC]). b Bipartite network shows the relationship of bacterial communities with crab species samples (coloured circles) and sediment (brown circles). Samples clustered based on their shared OTUs (small grey circles). Edges (the lines) indicate if an OTU is present in a certain sample (crabs and sediment circles), and edge colour is associated with the geographical location (blue, Republic of South Africa [ZA]; red, Kenya [KY]; yellow, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [KSA]). c Principal component analysis of gill bacterial microbiome associated with the selected crab species and sediment from the different geographical locations (ZA, KY, and KSA). d, e Bar plots with the relative abundance of the bacterial phyla retrieved in sediments and gills. The asterisk on “Proteobacteria” indicates that the majority of the OTUs within this phylum belong to Alphaproteobacteria. f-i Alpha diversity indexes of the bacterial community of gill and sediment