Fig. 1

Developmental aging is accompanied by a decrease in bacterial community diversity, richness, and Firmicute content. 16S rRNA sequencing of the bacterial phyllosphere of randomly interspersed S. lycopersicum M82 plants grown in a net house in the winter of 2018, N = 4 for each genotype, of different ages: "Seedling" (10 days old), "Vegetative" (3 weeks old), and "Reproductive" (6 weeks old). A Weighted UniFrac beta diversity. Distance is significantly smaller within groups then between groups (p < 0.016). B Principal coordinates analysis of distance between all individual samples in the weighted UniFrac beta diversity calculations. C Species richness- alpha diversity. D Shannon index. E Proportion of Firmicutes in the bacterial community of indicated genotypes. F Proportion of Proteobacteria in the bacterial community of indicated genotypes. Floating bars encompass minimum to maximum values, line indicates mean. Different letters indicate statistical significance between samples in a two-tailed t-test with Welch's correction. C p < 0.0073; D p < 0.04; E p < 0.0045; F p < 0.0007