Fig. 5

Functional profiles of phylloplane microbiomes. a Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordinations based on Bray–Curtis distance matrices of KEGG Orthology (KO) showing the maize phylloplane microbiome significantly differed from the plastic leaf microbiome (n = 18), and the boxplot showing the functional diversity (include KO, CAZyome and COG) of plastic leaf and maize phylloplane microbiomes across three developmental stages. The relative contribution of different factors on microbiome functional composition was tested with PERMANOVA. Different letters above the boxes indicate a significant difference determined by nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis test. b Ternary plots depicting functional profiles (include KO, CAZyome and COG) of maize phylloplane microbiome significantly enriched at the seedling stage (FDR, P < 0.01). Each circle represents one functional gene/module (i.e. KO, CAZyome and COG), and the size of each circle represents its relative abundance. c Heat map exhibiting the relative abundance (Z-score) of functional genes (based on KO) involved in C, N, and P cycling which varied among three developmental stages