Table 1.

Network metrics of the bacterial communities in the gut of ticks and in the pure blood of calves

Parameters	ctrl	T	F	T+F	B
Number of nodesa	83	106	97	74	38
Number of edgesb	1446	3251	2185	1247	140
Positive edgesc	68.19	54.57	67.19	44.03	48.57
Negative edgesd	31.81	45.43	32.81	55.97	51.43
Connected componentse	1	1	1	1	1
Network diameterf	2	3	2	2	4
Graph densityg	0.425	0.584	0.469	0.462	0.199
Modularityh	0.450	0.192	0.377	0.225	0.248
Average degreei	34.843	61.34	45.052	33.703	7.368
Avg. clustering coefficientj	0.875	0.866	0.875	0.590	0.340
Avg. path lengthk	1.575	1.422	1.531	1.538	2.104
Maximum degreel	81	104	93	44	15

^aNumber of unique ASVs present on the network

^bNo. of significant correlations between ASVs (weight ≥ 0.7 and P-value < 0.05)

^cPercentage of positive correlations

^dPercentage of negative correlations

^eNo. of separate components in the network

^fShortest distance between the two most distant nodes in the network

^gMeasure of how many ties between ASVs exist compared with how many ties between ASVs are possible

^hMeasures the strength of division of a network into clusters or communities

ⁱAverage no. of edges per node

^jMeasures the weighted degree to which nodes in a graph tend to cluster together

^kAverage no. of steps along the shortest paths for all possible pairs of nodes

^lMaximum number of connections (edges) observed

Treatments: B—pure blood sample from the calf; ctrl—ticks artificially fed with pure blood; T—ticks artificially fed with blood plus Tetracycline; F—ticks artificially fed with pure blood and treated with Metarhizium anisopliae; T+F—combined use of tetracycline and M. anisopliae treatment