near-significantgold
In the present study, the absence of enhanced performance of prebiotic groups, as well as their near-significant reduction in BW on day 14, may reflect mismatches between substrate availability and microbial adaptation: in the sequential GXOS diet group, early GOS exposure may have primed communities that then required additional time to adjust to XOS, delaying microbial shifts and subsequent XOS-mediated performance benefits; conversely, in the XOS group, introducing XOS after seven days of the basal diet may have disrupted the stabilising microbial community, requiring a reorganisation of established cross-feeding networks and imposing short-term metabolic costs that limited growth efficiency.