Fig. 5

The decomposition of biological variation among bacterial families. a Heatmap of posterior distribution of log-ratio variance (ρ) between pairs of bacterial families. Heatmap color is given by the median of the posterior distribution of ρ. Columns and rows refer to the bacteria in the numerator and denominator of the corresponding log-ratios respectively. A similar decomposition of technical variation is shown in Additional file 11. b–d The highest variance bacteria displayed distinct temporal patterns (95% posterior credible regions for θ). Hourly sampling results in smaller posterior credible intervals and more resolvable dynamics in the time around day 23. b The balance between the family Rikenellaceae versus all other bacterial families decreased substantially during the feed disruption of vessels 1 and 2. c The balance between the Fusobacteriaceae and Synergistaceae versus all other bacterial families slowly increased over the course of the study after an initial acclimation period. d The balance between the family Enterobacteriaceae versus all other bacterial families displayed fluctuating dynamics likely related to those shown in Fig. 4