Fig. 5.

Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) of bacterial communities (characterized with 16 S amplicon sequencing) calculated with Bray–Curtis dissimilarity between samples from four different rivers (Site A-D), with three different groups by filter pore size. Color is by sampling site, and shape is by size group. ‘All bacteria’ is the total community, directly filtered onto a 0.2 µm filter. Large bacteria is the HNA-dominated community collected on a 0.4 µm filter, and Small bacteria is the LNA-dominated community in the 0.4 µm filtrate, collected on a 0.2 µm filter. In NMDS plots, points that are closer together represent bacterial communities more similar to each other than those further away. A low stress value indicates a robust diagram