Multivariate analysis of the effect of sex and life stage on the relatedness of <i>Amblyomma americanum</i> bacterial communities.

<p>Tick DNAs from the archival collection (n = 27) were older, collected in a different geographical region, and processed using different protocols than tick DNAs from the Georgia collection (n = 104).</p><p>*Corrected for multiple comparisons using Holm’s method; α  = 0.05.</p

Significance of co-infection patterns between selected operational taxonomic units (OTUs).

<p>Only data from the Georgia tick DNA sample collection is shown. The upper triangle represents <i>p</i>-values of positive associations (codetection in the same sample) between OTUs and the lower triangle the <i>p</i>-values of negative associations. Black cells were not evaluated due to low expected co-occurrence (<1) between the OTUs <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0102130#pone.0102130-Veech1" target="_blank">[49]</a>.</p

Non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (NMDS) of a Bray-Curtis distance matrix describing archival <i>Amblyomma americanum</i> bacterial communities.

<p>Each point symbolizes a single tick’s community (n = 27); some points may overlap completely. Point and ellipse colors indicate life stage; ellipses represent 95% confidence intervals around life stage centroids. Non-overlapping centroids are considered significantly different at α = 0.05. R² values in the upper left corner of plots describe the amount of variation in the data set explained by the groupings. The stress value is a measure of the disagreement between the rank order in the original data set and that in the NMDS (lower numbers indicate better agreement). Numbers indicate the species scores for the plot as follows: (1) <i>Coxiella</i>, (2) <i>Rickettsia</i>, (3) <i>Midichloria</i> 1, (4) <i>Borrelia</i>, (5) <i>Francisella</i>, (6) <i>Midichloria</i> 2, (7) <i>Ehrlichia</i>, (8) Enterobacteriaceae, (9) <i>Pseudomonas</i> 1, (10) Burkholderiaceae, (11) Acidobacteria Gp1, (12) <i>Pseudomonas</i> 2, (13) Rhizobiales 2, (14) <i>Bacillus</i>, (15) Acetobacteraceae 1, (16) Acetobacteraceae 2, (17) Bacteria 1, (18) Bacteria 2.</p

Life stage and geographic origin of <i>Amblyomma americanum</i> ticks used in bacterial community analyses.

§<p>Nymphs collected in July 2010; adults in July 2010 and May 2011.</p><p>*Nymphs collected in August 2010; adults in May 2011.</p><p>NT = Not tested.</p

Non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (NMDS) of a Bray-Curtis distance matrix describing Georgian <i>Amblyomma americanum</i> bacterial communities.

<p>Each point symbolizes a single tick’s community (n = 104); some points may overlap completely. Point and ellipse colors indicate life stage; ellipses represent 95% confidence intervals around life stage centroids. Non-overlapping centroids are considered significantly different at α = 0.05. R² values in the upper left corner of plots describe the amount of variation in the data set explained by the groupings. The stress value given is a measure of the disagreement between the rank order in the original data set and that in the NMDS (lower numbers indicate better agreement). Brown numbers indicate the species scores for select OTUs as follows: (1) <i>Coxiella</i>, (2) <i>Rickettsia</i>, (3) <i>Midichloria</i> 1, (4) <i>Borrelia</i>, (5) <i>Ehrlichia</i>, (6) Bacillales 1, (7) <i>Wolbachia</i>, (8) Rhizobiales 1, (9) <i>Rhodobaca</i>, (10) Bacillales 2, (11) <i>Nitriliruptor</i>, (12) Bacillales 3.</p

Bacterial operational taxonomic unit (OTU) sequence abundance detected in tick samples.

<p>OTUs present in greater than one third of all tick samples were considered broadly distributed. OTUs present at a mean abundance ≥1% of the community (i.e. 10 sequences) were considered locally abundant. Sequence abundance values are slightly offset to reveal overlapping OTUs.</p