Fig. 1

Differences in alpha and beta diversity based on the ‘universal’ approach of 16S rRNA gene sequencing between high (HE) and low-methane emitters (LE). Profiles of the whole study cohort (n=100) are shown. The profiles of the matched study subset (n=30) are shown in Supplementary Figure 1. A.I. An examination of Shannon diversity index revealed significant differences in alpha diversity (RSV (ribosomal sequence variants) based; analysis of variance, ANOVA). A.II. The microbiome of HEs clustered significantly differently in the RDA plot (RSV based). B.I LEfSe (Linear Discriminant Analysis Effect Size) analysis of the 100 most abundant phyla and B.II–III. Relative abundance of selected phyla in ANOVA plots. C.I. LEfSe analysis of the 100 most abundant genera. LEfSe determines taxonomic features which are most likely to explain differences between groups by coupling tests for statistical significance with other tests for biological consistency and effect relevance [25]. C.II–VII. ANOVA plots of selected genera and statistical significance