Fig. 4

Effects of early-in-life rumen microbial inoculation on the rumen methanogens community in goats. Boxplots indicating the total methanogens abundance (A) and diversity indexes (B,C). Venn diagrams indicating the number of OTUs in the core community (D). Principal co-ordinates analysis (E) illustrating the treatment effects on the methanogens community showing the most discriminant OTUs (ρ > 0.55). Distance-based redundancy analysis illustrating relationship between the structure of the methanogens community and rumen function indicators before (F), during (G) and after (H) weaning. Pair-wise PERMANOVA values are provided in grey boxes based on the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity. Goat kids inoculated (I) with fresh rumen fluid from adult goats adapted to forage-rich (RFF) or concentrate-rich diets (RFC), autoclaved rumen fluid (AUT) or absence of inoculation as control (CTL) and sampled at different times (T). In Figs. A, B and C, treatment means with different letters differ