Figure 1.

Effects of dietary treatments (C—Control, Br—Broilact^®, Sy—Synbiotic feed additive) and age of birds on the alpha diversity of ileal chymus (IC), ileal mucosa (IM), and caecal chymus (CC) microbiota in broiler chickens. Boxplots representing alpha diversity by Chao1 estimator, Shannon, and Simpson indexes. Boxes represent the median, the 25th, and the 75th percentiles of the groups. Alpha diversity indices at different taxonomical levels and in different intestinal samples (IC, IM, and CC) were compared using two-way ANOVA test with Tukey’s HSD multiple group comparison’s post hoc test, using the dietary treatments (C, Br and Sy) and the age of birds (7, 14, 21, and 40 day) as main factors. The differences were considered significant at a level of p ≤ 0.05. Dots represent the outlier values.