Various ecological indexes were calculated from the microbial
fingerprinting of whole larvae of the two feeding regimes (Table 3).
The multivariate analysis did not show any tank effects and no time
dependent effects except for richness (df ¼ 1, F ¼ 4.55, p 0.05).
However, treatment and time*treatment interactions were
observed for Richness and Simpson index. The species richness
(represented by the number of bands observed) indicates differences
between feeding regimes, which became significant at
24 dph. The diversity of the microbiota (represented by Simpson
index) was more similar between the two feeding regimes at
24 dph compared to the microbiota from control and MacroGard®
fed fish sampled at 11 dph.