Fig. 3: Ecotypes of tick microbiomes and their characteristics.
From: Genome-resolved metagenomics reveals microbiome diversity across 48 tick species
a, Hierarchical clustering of tick microbiome samples and the corresponding ecotype assignment, tick host information and taxonomic profiles. The sample information from top to bottom includes ecotype, parasitized statuses, engorgement, gender and tick genus. The top nine genera of highest abundance are displayed. F, female; M, male. b, Potential of Heat-Diffusion for Affinity-Based Transition Embedding (PHATE) dimension reduction results for tick microbiome samples. Dimn, dimension. The number following each ecotype designated as ETn indicates the count of representative samples within each ecotype. The average relative abundance of microbial genera is displayed for representative samples. c, Alpha diversity of samples corresponding to the five ecotypes. In each box plot, the centre line indicates the median, the edges of the box represent the first and third quartiles, and the whiskers extend to span a 1.5 interquartile range from the edges. Different letters indicate statistically significant differences at P < 0.05 by analysis of variance. d, Correlations between different ecotypes and overall sample characteristics (including tick, animal hosts, geographic locations and environmental factors) were determined using permutation tests. Five colours represent five different ecotypes, while grey represents the overall sample. The abbreviations are as follows: Tmin, mean minimum temperature; Tmean, mean temperature; RHmean, mean relative humidity; Prmean, mean daily precipitation; Prmax, maximum precipitation; Tmax, mean maximum temperature; ASD, monthly average sunshine duration; AWS, average wind speed per 2 min; AAP, average atmospheric pressure. The grey text represents environmental factors, while the black text indicates characteristics of ticks. e, The model of environmental influences on tick microbiome and significant factors affecting high-abundance genera. Link diagram on the right shows the factors influencing the specific microbial taxa using the random forest model. Panel e created with Figdraw.com.
