Fig. 1

Simpson and Shannon alpha diversity index assessment. Box denotes the first and third quartiles, whiskers denote the most extreme observations within 1.5 times the inter-quartile range distance from the box; outliers are marked as points. The horizontal bar within the box represents the median, and the “+” denotes the mean. The red, green, and blue areas represent kernel probability densities for the data. Repeated measures ANOVA found no significant differences in Shannon (p=0.99) or Simpson (p=0.76) diversity indices among the sample collection methods