Diversity and composition of the cervicovaginal microbiota.

(A) Rank abundance plots of bacterial taxa in the eight established community state types. Rank abundance plots were used to estimate the bacterial diversity by measuring richness, dominance, and evenness. Richness is the distance a curve extends along the x-axis while dominance is the y-intercept. A higher value on the y-axis depicts increased dominance; hence, low diversity. Evenness is indicated by a low slope of the curve. Therefore, in a rank abundance plot, a high dominance, more richness and evenness in a bacterial community indicate a high ecological diversity. (B) STAMP extended error bar plots depicting enriched bacterial taxa in two community state types. Only features with greater than zero difference between their percentage proportions in CST-3 and CST-8 with an effect size ≥1.0 and q-value <0.05 are shown. The statistical comparison was carried out in STAMP. The p-values (adjusted by Benjamini-Hochberg correction to account for false discovery rates), effect size and CI (0.95, DP: bootstrap) computed by White’s non-parametric t-test (two-sided type) are indicated. The difference in mean proportions and 95% CI are shown on the bar plots.