# Difficulty interpreting the results of Permanova and Bray Curtis
**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/difficulty-interpreting-the-results-of-permanova-and-bray-curtis/28395
**Category:** General Discussion
**Tags:** permanova, pcoa
**Created:** [November 23, 2023, 9:17am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/difficulty-interpreting-the-results-of-permanova-and-bray-curtis/28395 "2023-11-23T09:17:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Linda\_Abenaim](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Linda_Abenaim)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2023, 9:17am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/difficulty-interpreting-the-results-of-permanova-and-bray-curtis/28395/1 "2023-11-23T09:17:32Z")
Hi everyone 😀
Is anyone available to help me interpret and understand my beta diversity results? particularly Permanova and Bray Curtis.
I am analysing the gut microbiome of an insect species raised on a treated and a control diet and would like to see any bacterial community differences.
From the permanova test, I obtained a significant difference between the diets (p= 0.04) but looking at the Bray Curtis graph, I don't seem to notice any differences. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the graph;
could someone help me?
Thank you very much in advance
[unweighted-unifrac-treatment-significance.qzv](https://forum.qiime2.org/uploads/short-url/imcilE4cbTIu88aTSZUjRi4aIRD.qzv) (308.7 KB)
[bray\_curtis\_emperor.qzv](https://forum.qiime2.org/uploads/short-url/yYACDL4YsjsY0chYuTUDxJLYcUt.qzv) (861.7 KB)
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### Author:  [@timanix](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/timanix)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2023, 12:31pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/difficulty-interpreting-the-results-of-permanova-and-bray-curtis/28395/2 "2023-11-23T12:31:55Z")
Hi!
Looks like you provided PERMANOVA results for unweighted unifrac and PCoA for Bray-Curtis, which are different metrics (you should use the same metric for both).
But on the PCoA plot you can easily distinct two groups of the samples based on the treatment - just draw a line from upper end of Axis2 to the right end of Axis1 and you see that samples can be divided by such line.
Hope it helps.
Best,
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### Author:  [@Linda\_Abenaim](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Linda_Abenaim)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2023, 2:04pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/difficulty-interpreting-the-results-of-permanova-and-bray-curtis/28395/3 "2023-11-23T14:04:00Z")
Hi Timur!
Thank you so much for your help!
Unfortunately I don't understand very well how to distinct two groups with line.
Could you show me?
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### Author:  [@timanix](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/timanix)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2023, 3:01pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/difficulty-interpreting-the-results-of-permanova-and-bray-curtis/28395/4 "2023-11-23T15:01:05Z")
You don't need that line - it is a tool from my imagination...
But here it is
On the right panel, one can adjust color, size, axes, shapes, and visibility to help with group differentiation.
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### Author:  [@Linda\_Abenaim](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Linda_Abenaim)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2023, 3:14pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/difficulty-interpreting-the-results-of-permanova-and-bray-curtis/28395/5 "2023-11-23T15:14:49Z")
thank you very very much!!
You were really a great help!
I also did the permanova on the bray curtis distance, was this what you meant before?
[bray-curtis-treatment-significance.qzv](https://forum.qiime2.org/uploads/short-url/ugiDvEGNiolkWSHZsWxFmyaV3lK.qzv) (311.9 KB)
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### Author:  [@timanix](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/timanix)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2023, 3:36pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/difficulty-interpreting-the-results-of-permanova-and-bray-curtis/28395/6 "2023-11-23T15:36:09Z")
Thank you for sharing!
In general, looks correct - you have 2 distinct groups on PCoA with a significant PERMANOVA test.