Fig. 4. Effects of acetate supplementation on host physiology and gut microbiota during coprophagy prevention (Experiment 3).

a Changes of body mass over the length of the experiment. b Changes of food intake over the length of the experiment (repeated measures ANOVA). c Colon lengths of the three treatment groups. d, e The concentrations of six short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in cecal contents. f Ghrelin concentration in the serum. g Expression of FFAR2 in the hippocampus. h Expression of neuropeptides in hypothalamus.(POMC, CART, NPY, AgRP). i NMDS plot based on weighted and unweighted UniFrac distance metrics representing the differences in fecal microbial community structure in different groups. j Relative abundances of microbial phyla across treatment groups. CON: control group, coprophagy, CP-PBS: coprophagy prevention with PBS gavage, CP-Ace: copropghay prevention with Acetate gavage. Data are means ± SEM (n = 7 per group), and bars that do not share the same letter are significantly different from one another based on the Student–Newman–Keuls method.