Figure 1.

Graphic presentation of alpha, beta, and gamma diversity indices of order 1 and 2. Diversity measures were calculated, as described in the Section “Materials and Methods,” based on the Shannon entropy and the Simpson concentration diversity indices. The alpha diversity measure represents the average sample diversity in each condition/population. The gamma diversity measure represents the “global” repertoire diversity across all samples studied in each condition/population. The beta diversity measure represents the diversity component resulting from the variability between samples. In our Ig gene repertoire studies, the abundance data (numbers of unique sequences) of antibody clones in each sample was used to estimate the mean, standard error, and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of the total number of unique sequences in clones within each sample. The CI allows us to compare between diversity indices of different conditions. The error bars show the standard errors.