FIG 4.

Principal-coordinate analysis among microbial communities originating from the lake sturgeon larval gut across all four different treatments at three developmental stages (prefeeding and 1 week and 2 weeks after active feeding initiation) (A) and from environmental samples, including water, detritus, and Artemia fish (B). These environmental samples were collected at times corresponding to the times of fish sampling. Axes represent the first two principal coordinates maximizing the variance in the data (PCoA1 and PCoA2). Dissimilarity was calculated based on Bray-Curtis distances. The fish gut microbial communities from the four treatment groups are denoted S, Sp, GW, and GWp, as defined in the text. Water-GW and Water-S are water samples from groundwater and river water, respectively. Artemia-GW and Artemia-S are brine shrimp prepared using the respective water sources, and detritus was collected from a sock filter. Var, variation.