Fig. 4

Distribution and variation of functionally important genera along the goat GIT. a Variation of methane-producing (with yellow headers) and cellulose-digestive (with green headers) genera along the goat GIT; their relative abundances were calculated as reads count per million sequenced clean reads (TPM, log10 transformed; “Methods”). Their differential distribution was identified between groups by using LEfSe (see “Methods”); the Wilcoxon rank sum test was used to show the statistical significance between groups. ns: no significance, * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, *** P < 0.0001, **** P < 0.0001. b Genera whose relative abundances showed significant positive correlations with those of the CZAyme categories involved in cellulose digestions in different GIT sites. The heatmap color indicates the correlation coefficients (r); significant positive correlation results with r \(\ge\) 0.5, and P < 0.05 was retained. Pie chart shows the GIT sites in which the genera showed the highest relative abundance and GHs classification. * indicates the genera that were not previously annotated to have cellulose digestive capabilities