Fig. 2

C. elegans cultured in the laboratory with a mix of 14 wild-caught bacteria retains a specific microbiome. a–b Average frequencies of bacterial taxa of the experimental microbiome for the lawns at different time points and two developmental stages (L4 and adult) of three C. elegans strains (N2, MY316, MY379; Additional file 1: Tables S1-12 and S1-15). b Shows the results for an independent experiment with N2 only. c Fluorescence micrograph of C. elegans inhabited by its experimental microbiome, visualized through fluorescence in situ hybridization of the bacteria with the general eubacterial probe EUB338 in red and DAPI staining of nematode cell nuclei in blue. The anterior end of the worm is to the left. See Additional file 6 for a three-dimensional illustration. d–f Canonical correspondence analysis of the experimental microbiome of C. elegans, showing the first three axes and including nematode stage (L4 or adult), sample type (nematode or lawn), and nematode strain (N2, MY316, or MY379) as factors (indicated by colors and symbols; Additional file 1: Tables S1-13, S1-14, and S1-16). A three-dimensional visualization is given in Additional file 8; see also Additional file 7 and Additional file 9. For all treatments, we considered at least six replicates. The only exception referred to the treatment combination worm-L4-MY379, for which only three replicates remained after quality control and which was thus excluded from further statistical analysis. Further details are given in Tables S1-10 and S1-11