TABLE 5.

Analyses of molecular variance and similarities of the rumen bacterial communities from pre-weaned dairy calves and microbial inocula.

	AMOVA	ANOSIM
Comparison	P-value	R-value	P-value
week 3-week 4	0.07	0.06	0.05
week 3-week 5	< 0.001	0.17	< 0.001
week 3-week 6	< 0.001	0.28	< 0.001
week 4-week 5	0.86	–0.02	0.76
week 4-week 6	0.12	0.06	0.05
week 5-week 6	0.40	0.026	0.18
PE (+)-PE (−)	0.07	–0.06	0.56
BE (+)-BE (−)	0.41	7.67 × 10–4	0.42
BE (+)-BE inoculum	< 0.001	0.68	< 0.001
BE (−)-BE inoculum	< 0.001	0.67	< 0.001
PE (+)-PE inoculum	< 0.001	0.46	< 0.001
PE (−)-PE inoculum	< 0.001	0.38	< 0.001
BE inoculum-PE inoculum	< 0.001	0.63	< 0.001

Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) and analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) were used to draw comparisons by calf age (3–6 weeks), within treatment groups, and between treatment groups and the two inocula sources, and between inocula sources. Bacterial communities were dissimilar if P < 0.05.