Fig. 6

A Principal coordinates analysis (PcoA) of generalized UniFrac values illustrating differences in microbial community composition between samples collected with each swab type. The PCoA demonstrates clustering of ASVs from microbial communities collected with DG swabs, NS, or PS. Shaded areas represent 95% confidence ellipses for each swab type. Microbial community composition differed significantly between each community type (pairwise PERMANOVA with Benajmin-Hochberg correction, P < 0.005). B Barplot showing the relative abundances of the six phyla representing greater than 1% of the whole community illustrating the variation in microbial community structure across all samples. Error bars on the barplot demonstrate the standard error of the mean relative abundance for each of the six phyla when sampled using DG swabs, NS, or PS. Significant differences between relative abundances as collected with each swab type are illustrated by different letters (Pairwise Wilcoxon rank-sum test with Benjamini–Hochberg correction, P < 0.05)