Fig. 2

16S rRNA gene metabarcoding reveals a wide bacterial diversity in acontia of E. diaphana. a: Alpha-diversity metrics (Observed ASVs, Simpson’s Diversity Index [1-D], Shannon’s Index) of the bacterial communities present in acontia from genotypes AIMS1–4. Boxes represent the first and third quartiles for three independent replicates, the bar represents the median, and dots represent minimum and maximum values. No significant differences between genotypes were found in any of the alpha-diversity metrics based on ANOVAs. b: PCoA visualization of beta-diversity of the bacterial communities in acontia from genotypes AIMS1–4, based on Bray-Curtis dissimilarity matrices. Each point is an individual sample. Genotype was considered as a significant effect based on a PERMANOVA (999 permutations, p = 0.001), but no pairwise comparisons between genotypes was found significant (PERMANOVA, 999 permutations). c: Relative abundance of bacterial families in acontia from genotypes AIMS1–4. For each genotype, three independent replicates were merged