Fig. 2

Microbial community variation over the different HF regions. (a) Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) plot for beta-diversity patterns based on Bray-Curtis distances from the three HF regions. Numbers refer to the different donors: (1) 45 years old male; (2) 25 years old male, and (3) 66 years old male. NMDS stress value= 0.2. (b-e) Percentage of abundance of the main contributors towards community variations between HF regions, according to SIMPER analysis. Mean abundance is the mean value of the relative abundance of each genus in the sampling groups (ANOVA test, **p< 0.01)