Table 2.

Mean relative proportions for the most abundant taxa in each stage of pregnancy. The following ten taxa below were identified by taking the top ten ranked taxa for each stage, collapsing them together, and keeping only those greater than 1% in all samples

	Mean relative proportions			p values for comparison of the meansb
Taxa	First Trimester (Na = 47)	Third Trimester (N = 45)	Postpartum (N = 34)	p valuec	First - Postpartumd	Third - Postpartumd
Lactobacillus crispatus	49.1	44.0	6.7	0.00	***	***
Gardnerella vaginalis	15.0	10.0	18.6	0.29
Lactobacillus jensenii	16.2	17.4	0.0	0.00	**	***
Lactobacillus gasseri	10.2	13.9	0.6	0.01	·	**
Lactobacillus iners	2.7	8.9	11.0	0.21
Streptococcus anginosus	0.0	0.0	10.1	0.00	***	***
Streptococcus agalactiae	0.6	0.1	6.2	0.11
Atopobium vaginae	1.2	0.3	4.6	0.35
Bifidobacterium breve	2.1	0.4	2.0	0.69
Prevotella bivia	0.0	0.0	4.6	0.00	***	***

^aN = the number of samples/observations in each category

^bThe asterisks correspond to the following levels of significance for the p values: ‘.’, p < 0.1; *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01, ***, p < 0.001

^cThe p values in this column result from running linear mixed-effects models or Kruskal-Wallis tests to test for significant differences between the means of each stage; p values in italics are significant

^dThe p values in this column result from evaluating multiple comparisons between group means using Tukey’s test for linear models or the Dunn’s test with a Bonferroni adjustment