FIG 4 .

Stability of fecal microbiomes in different preservatives and under different temperature treatments. (a) Box plots show comparisons of weighted UniFrac distances between time points within each preservation type, within each individual, and across temperature treatments. Horizontal lines show the average difference in diversity between replicate samples (lowest line, light tan), between different dogs (next line up, tan), between human individuals (next line up in dark tan), and between dogs and humans (highest line, brown). Colors represent the different temperatures at which samples were stored. “−20C after 1wk” represents samples that were stored at −20°C following 1 week of storage at ambient temperature. 70etoh and 95etoh, 70% and 95% ethanol, respectively. (b to f) Scatterplots show the relative abundance (percentage) of each OTU found in the freshly collected sample placed in a given preservative, plotted against its relative abundance in the same preservative after 8 weeks, for each temperature manipulation, except in panel b, where the “None” plot shows the comparison between samples frozen for 1 week and samples frozen for 8 weeks. Colors correspond to different individuals. Correlation coefficients for each plot are shown in parentheses.