Fig. 4

Effects of OTU properties on the probability of OTU loss and deposition events. OTU abundances were binned by rank percentile, with a higher percentile bin indicating a more abundant OTU, and indicator values by value, with a higher value indicating an OTU more specific for and faithful to an individual’s microbiota. OTUs with the ‘hitting set member’ property are those found to be most useful for uniquely identifying an individual and body site. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. A hazard ratio >1 indicates that the covariate increases the probability of the event relative to the baseline, while a value <1 indicates the covariate decreases the probability. No hazard ratios were calculated for the 0–69th abundance percentiles, indicator values between 0 and 0.2 or for non-membership of the hitting set, as the coefficients associated with these covariates are implicit by exclusion from the other covariate levels. The x-axis has been log₁₀ scaled