Quantitative and differential analysis of ciliate protozoa in rumen content samples filtered before and after fixation

The objective of this study was to assess whether the straining of rumen content samples influences the estimation of protozoal density. Ninety rumen samples were obtained from 30 cattle (three samples per animal). The samples were subjected to one of three treatments at the moment of collection: 1) fixation informalin without straining(control treatment), 2) straining before fixation informalin, or 3)straining after fixation informalin.To test the hypothesis of the variation in the protozoa composition in the samples, multivariate analyses with non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) were ...