Table 1.

The differences in relative abundance (% ± SD) of five major bacterial phyla between alpine musk deer and forest musk deer.

Major phyla	Juvenile			Adult
	AMD	FMD		AMD	FMD
Firmicutes	63.07 ± 4.55	73.58 ± 9.54	t = 3.15, p = 0.008	74.72 ± 4.43	82.42 ± 3.79	t = 4.18, p = 0.001
Bacteroidetes	25.60 ± 7.69	15.52 ± 7.92	t = 2.89, p = 0.01	20.48 ± 4.31	9.01 ± 0.59	t = 8.33, p < 0.001
Proteobacteria	3.75 ± 5.54	3.66 ± 4.43	U = 43.0, p = 0.63	1.17 ± 0.63	1.61 ± 0.93	U = 39.0, p = 0.44
Actinobacteria	1.96 ± 2.04	0.66 ± 0.63	t = 1.92, p = 0.08	0.54 ± 0.33	0.98 ± 0.84	t = 1.56, p = 0.14
Verrucomicrobia	1.07 ± 1.15	3.17 ± 3.25	t = 1.93, p = 0.08	0.70 ± 0.57	2.24 ± 2.28	t = 2.08, p = 0.06

The significance of Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, and Verrucomicrobia was determined using the independent-sample t-test, whereas the non-parametric Mann–Whitney U-test was used to examine the significance of Proteobacteria.