Population differences in gut microbiota of V. stejnegeri
The α-diversity analyses revealed no significant differences in the intestinal flora among the three populations of V. stejnegeri (Table 5). The PCoA results indicated that 64.3% of the variance was explained by PCoA 1 and PCoA 2, with significant differences in gut microbial diversity among the three populations (Fig. 4, R2 = 0.48, P = 0.01). PCoA results also indicated that all samples from Anhui clustered with the H2 and H3 samples from Hunan, while all samples from Guizhou clustered with the H1 sample from Hunan. Based on LEfSe, gut microbial abundance among the three populations differed significantly, with 38 microbial taxa from Anhui, three from Guizhou, and five from Hunan explaining the differences among the three populations (Fig. 5). Notably, the Anhui population was characterized by taxa in the phyla Pseudomonadota, Actinomycetota, Myxococcota, Thermodesulfobacteriota, Bacteroidota, and Planctomycetota. In contrast, the Guizhou population was characterized by taxa in the phylum Pseudomonadota, and the Hunan population by taxa in the phylum Bacteroidota (Fig. 5).