Bacterial community diversification.

<p>Variation in beta diversity, measured as the average degree of dispersion (i.e. the average dissimilarity from individual samples to their group centroid) among (<b>A</b>) sponge types and ambient sediments, (<b>B</b>) sponge families, (<b>C</b>) sponge species with more than 5 specimens per species, (<b>D</b>) sponge species with less than 5 specimens. Different lower-case letters above each box denote significant mean difference in dispersion based on pairwise Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney testing at P<0.05. Species with less 5 specimens were not statistically compared.