Fig. 2

Beta diversity measures in vaginal (a, b) and fecal (c, d) samples across gestation stages and between open and bred cattle. a, c show the Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA) plot based on community membership as measured by the Jaccard distances. b, d show the PCoA based on community structure based on Bray-Curtis dissimilarity matrices. Triangles and circle represent bred and open females, respectively. Stages are indicated by color: red, blue, green and purple represent pre breeding, and gestational trimesters 1 through 3 respectively. These stages were defined based on the status of the pregnant cattle. Open cattle stayed open throughout the whole experiment. Samples were collected prospectively but pregnancy was defined retrospectively. The ellipses were calculated and drawn with 0.95 of confidence level. Bred: cattle that were pregnant after the breeding season; Open: cattle that never established pregnancy