Fig. 6

Child’s age was a significant determinant of mother-child dissimilarities. a Box and whisker plot showing distribution of ages among the biologic and adoptive group children. b Scatterplot exhibiting the relationship of mother-child distances with age of the child. A strong negative correlation between mother-child dissimilarities and child’s age was observed. Both adoptive and biologic children were included in this analysis, and two older children (>= 10 years) were excluded (n = 101). c For the same 101 children, the alpha diversity measure Shannon diversity index was plotted against age. The blue dotted line represents mean Shannon diversity for mothers of those children. Alpha diversity also showed strong positive correlation with child’s age, and most older children’s diversities were similar to the adults. Strength and direction of associations were measured using Spearman’s rank-order test. Scatter plots were smoothed using the regression method LOESS fit. Analysis was based on strain level communities