Fig. 6

Mean vegetative CFUs and spore recovery between non-epidemic and epidemic ribotype isolates did not differ over 72-h. The 13 isolates (7 non-epidemic and 6 epidemic) were incubated in SM broth over a 72-h period. A representative sample was then taken from each culture and plated on an agar medium ±0.1% taurocholate. The non-epidemic isolates are represented by the black bars, and the epidemic isolates are represented by the gray bars. This data represents the average of three independent experiments and error bars indicate the standard errors of the means. a Mean vegetative CFU’s recovered from 72-h SM broth cultures. b Mean spores/mL recovered from 72-h SM broth culture. c Mean number of spores recovered from SM broth cultures normalized per 1000 vegetative cells recovered at the corresponding time point