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 2 Effect of replacing soybean meal with dried distillers grains with solubles on relative abundance of major ruminal bacterial phylum (each with a relative abundance ≥0.5% in at least one treatment) in different ruminal ecological niches of growing Hu lambs

Phylum	Protein source (PS)			Ruminal ecological niche (REN)				P-value
Phylum	SBM	DDGS	SEM	Solid	Liquid	Epithelial	SEM	PS	REN	PS× REN
Bacteroidetes	47.80	41.92	2.779	52.15^a	55.01^a	27.41^b	3.404	0.15	< 0.01	0.83
Firmicutes	40.65	45.21	3.034	41.75	41.41	45.63	3.716	0.30	0.68	0.78
Proteobacteria¹	1.42 (6.05)	1.45 (7.04)	0.111	0.88^b (0.93)	0.84^b (0.64)	2.58^a (18.06)	0.120	0.68	< 0.01	0.47
Spirochaetes	3.10	3.20	0.859	2.45^b	0.76^b	6.23^a	0.941	0.90	< 0.01	0.59
Fibrobacteres	0.49	0.56	0.214	1.16^a	0.12^b	0.30^b	0.254	0.82	< 0.01	0.94
Actinobacteria	0.59	0.85	0.115	0.65	0.85	0.66	0.141	0.11	0.55	0.84

^a-bMeans with different superscripts within a row of REN differ (P < 0.05)
¹Data were cubic root transformed to ensure normality of residuals. Value in parenthesis is the mean of untransformed data in each treatment

ISSN: 2049-1891