Fig. 2

Minimal significant alterations in the gut microbiome are associated with synbiotic supplementation in juvenile Japanese macaques. To reduce sampling heterogeneity, rarefaction was performed and resulted in 2969 sequences from each sample in this analysis. a Alpha diversity using the Shannon Diversity Index is similar between untreated juveniles at 12 months of age and synbiotic supplemented juveniles during treatment, but significantly lower by chao1. Statistical significance was tested using Dunn’s multiple comparisons test (*p ≤ 0.05). b PCoA displaying beta diversity of untreated juveniles at 12 months of age in comparison to treated juveniles at pre-supplementation, mid-supplementation, and post-supplementation (1, 2, and 4 months). Gray circles represent relative contributions in sample clustering for the top five genera. Open triangles represent centroids and ellipses indicate 95% confidence intervals. The juvenile cohort that received synbiotic supplementation was found to cluster separately from the cohort that did not receive synbiotic treatment (unweighted UniFrac PERMANOVA p = 0.001; weighted UniFrac PERMANOVA p = 0.005). Abbreviations: untreated (no supplementation) 12-month-old juveniles (Un) and synbiotic supplemented juveniles at pre-supplementation (Pre), mid-supplementation (Mid), and post-supplementation (one, two & 4 months: P1M, P2M & P4M)