Fig. 2.

Principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) of microbial communities from the fecal samples of dogs. This figure shows a 3D PCoA plot based on weighted UniFrac distances of 16S rRNA genes. (A) the samples collected at the beginning of the study (sampling time T0). (B) the samples collected after 15 d of administration of experimental diets (sampling time T15). (C) shows all the samples collected at T0 and T15. Green dots refer to control diet (CD), made with pasta and rice as main sources of starch in a ratio 1:1 and raw meat; red dots refer to a rice-based diet (B1), with a complementary food made of rice as the main source of starch and raw meat; blue dots refers to a potato-based diet (B2), with a complementary food made of potato as the main source of starch and raw meat. Each dot was an individual and analysis of similarity did not reveal clustering between the 3 groups (P > 0.05).