Table 1. PERMANOVA of all samples.

	Degrees of freedom	Sums of squares	F model	R2	P value
subject	2	58,888	198.1	0.605	<0.001
sampling time point	8	5088	4.3	0.052	<0.001
storage temperature	3	1597	3.6	0.016	<0.001
subject:sampling time point	16	9071	3.8	0.093	<0.001
storage temperature:duration	7	1184	1.1	0.012	0.04
Residuals	145	21555		0.221

Notes.

subject: three subjects A, B and C.

sampling time point: days stools were collected.

storage temperature before long-term freezing: immediately frozen, ambient, chilled, preservative at ambient.

duration of storage before long-term freezing: 0, 2, 5 or 24 h.