Table 4.

Comparisons of alpha-diversity indices¹ between beef cattle with different RFI values

	Angus (n = 16)	Charolais (n = 16) (mean ± SEM)	Kinsella composite hybrid (n = 16)
Bacteria
Chao1
L-RFI	317.03 ± 11.83	319.87 ± 12.95	381.88 ± 37.60
H-RFI	337.64 ± 21.82	326.69 ± 16.70	358.74 ± 27.93
P value2	NS	NS	NS
Shannon evenness
L-RFI	0.57 ± 0.01	0.59 ± 0.01	0.57 ± 0.01
H-RFI	0.58 ± 0.01	0.55 ± 0.02	0.54 ± 0.01
P value2	NS	0.03	NS
Simpson evenness
L-RFI	0.05 ± 0.00	0.05 ± 0.01	0.05 ± 0.00
H-RFI	0.05 ± 0.00	0.04 ± 0.00	0.04 ± 0.00
P value2	NS	NS	NS
Shannon index
L-RFI	3.17 ± 0.05	3.28 ± 0.06	3.21 ± 0.04
H-RFI	3.18 ± 0.06	3.06 ± 0.10	3.01 ± 0.07
P value2	NS	NS	0.04
Inverse Simpson
L-RFI	12.26 ± 0.96	13.89 ± 1.22	13.18 ± 0.74
H-RFI	12.78 ± 0.97	10.96 ± 1.31	10.53 ± 1.14
P value2	NS	NS	NS
Archaea
Chao1
L-RFI	25.88 ± 1.03	28.06 ± 2.36	24.17 ± 0.95
H-RFI	24.25 ± 1.22	24.65 ± 1.38	25.31 ± 1.32
P value2	NS	NS	NS
Shannon evenness
L-RFI	0.64 ± 0.02	0.62 ± 0.02	0.66 ± 0.02
H-RFI	0.64 ± 0.02	0.66 ± 0.01	0.65 ± 0.01
P value2	NS	NS	NS
Simpson evenness
L-RFI	0.22 ± 0.02	0.20 ± 0.01	0.24 ± 0.02
H-RFI	0.23 ± 0.02	0.26 ± 0.02	0.24 ± 0.01
P value2	NS	0.03	NS
Shannon index
L-RFI	2.00 ± 0.07	1.95 ± 0.06	2.07 ± 0.07
H-RFI	1.98 ± 0.07	2.07 ± 0.04	2.05 ± 0.03
P value2	NS	NS	NA
Inverse Simpson
L-RFI	5.21 ± 0.51	4.74 ± 0.37	5.67 ± 0.46
H-RFI	5.19 ± 0.50	5.93 ± 0.36	5.48 ± 0.14
P value2	NS	0.03	NS

NS not significant with P value not less than 0.05

¹To make alpha-diversity indices comparable among samples, the number of sequences per sample was normalized to the lowest reads number for bacteria (n = 274,885) and archaea (n = 4263), respectively

²P values were obtained between H- and L-RFI groups within each breed using the Kruskal-Wallis rank-sum test