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. 2023 Nov 20;9:87. doi: 10.1038/s41522-023-00454-9

Fig. 3. Vaginal microbiota dynamics across estrous stages in HMbmice.

Fig. 3

Vaginal swabs were collected at baseline and assigned the host’s estrous stage at time of collection. Estrous stage assignment is denoted as P = proestrus, E = estrus, M = metestrus, D = diestrus. a Vaginal microbial compositions of five individual HMbmice from Fig. 2 swabbed daily over the course of a week. Only Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 were co-housed. b Representative microscopic images of vaginal wet smears collected at each stage of the estrous cycle using a 10X objective lens on a brightfield microscope. Scale bar shows 150 μm. c Observed OTUs and (d) Shannon diversity of vaginal swab samples (n = 35). e Weighted normalized UniFrac distances of microbial compositions among samples categorized in the same estrous stage. f Weighted normalized UniFrac distances of microbial compositions between paired, consecutive samples collected from individual mice. g Weighted normalized UniFrac distances of microbial compositions between unpaired samples from sequential estrous stages. Tukey’s boxplots (c−e, g) or individual comparisons marked as symbols (f) are displayed with median and interquartile ranges. Data were statistically analyzed by Kruskal-Wallis with Dunn’s multiple comparisons test (c−f) or PERMANOVA followed by PERMDISP (g). PERMANOVA P values (P < 0.1) are colored in red if PERMDISP was also statistically significant (P < 0.05). All statistically significant P values are reported.