Figure 1.

Salivary microbe activity at six months. The stacked area chart displays sum normalized microbial read counts (y-axis) across 121 infant saliva samples (x-axis). Read counts for the 17 microbial phyla with reliable detection in infant saliva at six months of age are shown. Four phyla (Firmicutes, dark blue; Bacteroidetes, orange; Proteobacteria, grey; and Actinobacteria, yellow) accounted for 98% of microbial transcripts across all samples. However, the samples display heterogeneity in total microbial transcript abundance and the relative contributions of the four most abundant phyla. Cyanobacteria transcripts were nominally higher among children with typical neurodevelopment (d = 0.35, p = 0.012, adj p = 0.21) but accounted for only 0.01% of microbial transcripts.