TABLE 3.

Mean richness, Shannon diversity index, inverse Simpson index, Shannon evenness, Simpson evenness, and Pielou evenness at each taxonomic level of the fecal microbiome of healthy lactating women¹

	Phylum	Class	Order	Family	Genus
Richness	8 ± 2 (4–12)	16 ± 3 (6–21)	21 ± 4 (5–33)	37 ± 9 (9–59)	94 ± 23 (14–162)
Shannon diversity index	2.4 ± 0.5 (1.2–4.0)	3.0 ± 0.7 (1.8–5.1)	3.0 ± 0.7 (1.8–5.3)	6.4 ± 2.2 (2.8–13.5)	10.5 ± 3.7 (5.1–23.3)
Inverse Simpson index	2.1 ± 0.4 (1.0–3.4)	2.4 ± 0.5 (1.4–4.2)	2.4 ± 0.5 (1.4–4.3)	4.5 ± 1.7 (1.8–10.6)	6.1 ± 2.3 (2.4–14.3)
Shannon evenness	0.3 ± 0.1 (0.1–0.6)	0.2 ± 0.1 (0.1–0.5)	0.1 ± 0.1 (0.1–0.5)	0.2 ± 0.1 (0.1–0.7)	0.1 ± 0.1 (0.1–0.6)
Simpson evenness	0.26 ± 0.01 (0.12–0.54)	0.16 ± 0.05 (0.08–0.39)	0.12 ± 0.05 (0.06–0.47)	0.13 ± 0.08 (0.04–0.58)	0.07 ± 0.05 (0.02–0.38)
Pielou evenness	0.4 ± 0.1 (0.1–0.7)	0.4 ± 0.1 (0.2–0.6)	0.4 ± 0.1 (0.2–0.6)	0.5 ± 0.1 (0.3–0.9)	0.5 ± 0.1 (0.4–0.8)

¹Values are means ± SDs (ranges); n = 120 fecal samples from 20 healthy lactating women.