Table 5.

Effect of the dietary digestible fibre-to-starch ratio on cecal microbial alpha diversity in Angora rabbits

Items	Digestible fibre1)-to-starch ratio					SEM	p-values
	0.59	0.66	0.71	1.05	1.44		Linear	Quadratic
OTU number index (Chao 1 value)	11,313abc	9,673c	9,877bc	12,567a	11,208ab	443.4	0.025	0.551
OTU number index (ACE value)	11,838	10,427	10,282	13,357	13,292	505.4	0.052	0.251
Simpson index	0.969	0.967	0.966	0.966	0.973	0.004	0.606	0.617
Shannon index	8.21	6.90	6.88	7.36	7.60	0.243	0.846	0.302
Good’s coverage	0.988	0.988	0.988	0.984	0.984	<0.001	0.019	0.696

SEM, standard error of the mean; OTU, operational taxonomic unit; Chao 1, the Chao 1 estimator; (http://www.mothur.org/wiki/Chao); ACE, the ACE estimator (http://www.mothur.org/wiki/Ace).

¹⁾Digestible fibre was calculated by hemicelluloses + water insoluble pectin.

^a–cValues within a row with different superscripts differ significantly at p<0.05.