Effects of dietary replacement of soybean meal with dried distillers grains with solubles on the microbiota occupying different ecological niches in the rumen of growing Hu lambs

Table 1 Effect of replacing soybean meal with dried distillers grains with solubles on the alpha diversity measurements of ruminal microbiota (at 3% dissimilarity level) of different ruminal ecological niches of growing Hu lambs

Item	Protein source (PS)			Ruminal ecological niche (REN)				P-value
Item	SBM	DDGS	SEM	Solid	Liquid	Epithelial	SEM	PS	REN	PS × REN
Coverage, %	99.3	99.3	0.03	99.3	99.3	99.3	0.03	0.36	0.14	0.43
Observed OTUs	650.6	667.3	27.50	711.5^a	694.3^a	571.1^b	31.02	0.57	< 0.01	0.33
Chao 1	820.1	837.1	26.66	870.6^a	861.0^a	754.2^b	31.80	0.63	0.02	0.48
Shannon index	4.39	4.39	0.089	4.73^a	4.34^b	4.11^b	0.109	0.98	< 0.01	0.06

ISSN: 2049-1891