Table 1. Alpha diversity metrics for the bacterial communities across different regions of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract at an evolutionary distance D = 0.03. Values indicates means and standard errors derived from total samples for each GI regions. ES: Oesophagus, ST: Stomach, SI: Small intestine and LI: Large intestine.

Indices	ES	ST	SI	LI
Sequences	48535.50 ± 10864.05	37154.00 ± 2571.05	24939.25 ± 3098.35	41552.50 ± 10551.54
OTUs	109.25 ± 19.01	114.00 ± 9.14	64.25 ± 6.49	123.00 ± 29.16
Chao 1 index	144.80 ± 22.71	139.86 ± 12.77	87.07 ± 11.33a	157.41 ± 31.99
ACE index	148.61 ± 25.40	138.05 ± 13.10	90.62 ± 11.93b	157.28 ± 28.99
Shannon index	4.91 ± 0.47	4.33 ± 0.40	2.82 ± 0.63c	4.24 ± 1.01
Good's coverage	0.97 ± 0.01	0.97 ± 0.01	0.97 ± 0.01	0.96 ± 0.01
Conditional Uncovered Probability (CUP)
PE	0.03 ± 0.01	0.02 ± 0.00	0.02 ± 0.01	0.04 ± 0.01
Lower bound	0.004 ± 0.002	0.003 ± 0.001	0.004 ± 0.001	0.006 ± 0.002
Upper bound	0.042 ± 0.016	0.028 ± 0.006	0.040 ± 0.014	0.056 ± 0.017

Note: Superscript ‘^{a, b}’ indicate Chao 1 and ACE index of SI were significantly different from ST indices (ANOVA, P < 0.05). ‘^c’ indicates Shannon index of SI was significantly different (ANOVA, P < 0.05) from ES and ST.