Fig. 9
Relative abundances of representative ileal bacteria showing significant differential enrichment in healthy and NE-infected chickens supplemented with DCA or butyrate. Day-of-hatch male Cobb broilers were supplemented with or without 1 g/kg NaB, 0.75 g/kg DCA (DCA1), 1.5 g/kg DCA (DCA2), or a mixture of 1 g/kg NaB and 0.75 g/kg DCA (NaB + DCA1) or 1 g/kg NaB and 1.5 g/kg DCA (NaB + DCA2). Six groups of animals were subjected to NE, while the remaining group was mock-infected. The proximal ileal digesta were randomly collected from 12 surviving animals/group on d 17 and subjected to 16S rRNA gene sequencing. A Relative abundances (%) of C. perfringens and pathobionts. B Relative abundances (%) of SCFA-producing bacteria. C Relative abundances (%) of several lactobacilli. In the box and whisker plots, each box indicates median, 25th and 75th percentiles, while whiskers extend to 1.5 interquartile range. Significance was measured using the Kruskal–Wallis test and post hoc pairwise Wilcoxon rank sum test, and the significance (P < 0.05) was denoted by different superscripts