Fig. 3

Non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) of the global nasal bacterial community structure and index of multivariate dispersion (IMD). a nMDS and c IMD in 14 healthy children between the bacterial profiles of three sampling times for each healthy child (n = 42). b nMDS and d IMD of 12 infected children, where each child is represented by one color with either two or three samples per child (during picornavirus infection (PVI) n = 12, before PVI n = 9, after PVI n = 13). The color assignment for the IMD corresponds to the ones in the nMDS plot of each child. R: R-value, indicates the degree of separation between groups; P: p-value; 2D Stress: indicates the two-dimensional stress level on the plot