Fig. 3: Trends in benthic microbial diversity.

Partial effects estimated by generalized additive mixed models (GAMM) fitted on (A–D) OTU alpha diversity, (E–H) genus level alpha diversity, (I–M) predicted KO alpha diversity, (N–O) OTU beta diversity and (P, Q) genus level beta diversity and (R) predicted KO beta diversity, in response to the environmental predictors retained after model selection (see main text for further details). The vertical axes are centered and expressed in the scale of the response. The estimated degrees of freedom (df) of each smooth and the relative importance (RI) of each term are indicated in the top left corner. Shaded areas indicate the 95% confidence regions.