Figure 3.

Acute fasting promotes microbial diversity and richness and induces compositional changes in the fecal microbiota. Microbiota composition was assessed in fasted rats, with paired fecal samples collected pre- and post-fasting. Increased richness, indicted by OTUs (a), and alpha diversity (b) were observed after fasting. Significant changes in the relative abundance of Muribaculum (c), Lactobacillus (d), Clostridiales (e) and Ruminococcus (f) were identified. Compositional changes aligning with PCo2 were identified post-fasting (g), correlating with Muribaculum and Bacteroidales (h). A-F show paired results from individual animals (gray hashed lines), with the mean depicted by a solid black line. A-F were analyzed using a paired t-test where P < .05 was significant. A simple linear regression with Pearson correlation coefficients were used in H to determine strength and significance.