Figure 1: Bacterial phyla in specimens from 38 dolphins and 18 sea lions.
From: Marine mammals harbor unique microbiotas shaped by and yet distinct from the sea

Only one time point per animal and only specimens with ⩾372 pyrosequencing reads are shown (n=199, average number of reads per specimen was 3119.4). Four other single time point specimens and all 26 extraction controls yielded <50 reads. Specimens are shown in the same order as listed in Supplementary Table 1. The relative proportions of each phylum within each specimen and in the total data set are shown sorted on the average abundance in the combined data set (most abundant at the bottom). A total of 51 phyla were found. Only the 20 most abundant phyla are shown; the remaining 31 as well as all unclassifiable sequences were grouped together in ‘other phyla’; these are shown in Supplementary Fig. 1. Of the 20 phyla shown here, 19 were found in specimens obtained from the marine mammals; phylum SAR406 was only found in seawater samples. The horizontal lines at the top show the specimen source. ‘M’ and ‘W’ indicate specimens obtained from MMP and wild dolphins, respectively. No gastric or respiratory specimens were obtained from the wild dolphins, and in several cases different MMP dolphins were used for the respiratory sampling than for the oral/gastric/rectal sampling. Column ‘All’ on the right displays the average relative phyla abundance in all specimens. Blow, blowhole; Gast, gastric; F&S, fish and squid.