Extended Data Fig. 6: Ancient microbial hit characteristics.

a, Odds ratios for association of ancient hits with sample material (tooth or bone) across n = 61 species with ≥ 20 ancient hits. Symbols indicate significance of association (p ≤ 0.01, Fisher’s exact test; white triangles - more frequently identified in tooth; grey circles - no significant association). Error bars indicate 95% confidence interval of odds ratio b, c, Rates of observing multiple alleles in 2 randomly sampled sequencing reads at genomic sites in n = 190 ancient hits (average read depth ≥ 1X) across n = 120 samples. b, Multi-allele rate as a function of ANI. Symbol colour indicates average read depth. c, Distribution of multi-allele rate across species hits. Symbol colour indicates ANI. d, e Barplots showing number of hits identified in each microbial species group (d) or each species within groups of likely infections (e). Novel and previously reported ancient pathogen hits are distinguished by bar colour, with total number in each category labelled.