Fig. 1

a Heatmap of relative abundance of bacterial taxa. Each column represents a sample and each row a bacterial taxon. The top box indicates K means clustering belonging (C1–C4) and the second box from the top indicates infection group belonging (N = HPV negative, T = Transient HPV16 infection, P = Persistent HPV16 infection). Lactobacillus sp. are reported at highest possible taxonomic level and other bacteria are grouped at genus level if known, otherwise they are grouped on family level. Bacteria with lower abundance than 1% are classified as “Others” if they are non-Lactobacillus, and “Lactobacillus.sp2.” if they belong to Lactobacillus sp. b Stacked barplot for each infection group and sampling round (N = HPV negative, T = Transient HPV16 infection, P = Persistent HPV16 infection, 1 = Baseline sample, 2 = Follow up sample. Color indicate K means clustering group (C1–C4)