# Use longitudinal plugin analysis microbiota change over time
**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/use-longitudinal-plugin-analysis-microbiota-change-over-time/27392
**Category:** General Discussion
**Tags:** longitudinal
**Created:** [August 15, 2023, 3:49pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/use-longitudinal-plugin-analysis-microbiota-change-over-time/27392 "2023-08-15T15:49:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Joey51](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Joey51)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2023, 3:49pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/use-longitudinal-plugin-analysis-microbiota-change-over-time/27392/1 "2023-08-15T15:49:12Z")
Hello all,
Let me first describe the background of my experiment.
I study the microbiota in insects. One of my projects is to sequence the insect bacteria at different ages. The problem is everytime I have to sacrifice the insect to get the DNA for sequencing. I was wondering if I can use the longitudinal volatility function to trace the group change during the ages?
I found that there are a lot of different longitudinal functions available, do you have any recommended longitudinal function to analyze the microbiota change over time for those samples need to be sacrificed every sampling?
Thanks ahead!
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### Author:  [@5cr34m](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/5cr34m)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2023, 3:46am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/use-longitudinal-plugin-analysis-microbiota-change-over-time/27392/2 "2023-08-16T03:46:05Z")
Useful (perhaps) links
### A Survey of Statistical Methods for Microbiome Data Analysis
> **[Frontiers | A Survey of Statistical Methods for Microbiome Data Analysis](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/applied-mathematics-and-statistics/articles/10.3389/fams.2022.884810/full)**
>
> In the last decade, numerous statistical methods have been developed for analyzing microbiome data generated from high-throughput next-generation sequencing ...
### _BiomeHorizon_: Visualizing Microbiome Time Series Data in R
[https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/msystems.01380-21](https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/msystems.01380-21)
Regards,
SN
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### Author:  [@colinbrislawn](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/colinbrislawn)
#### Post date: [August 17, 2023, 5:58am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/use-longitudinal-plugin-analysis-microbiota-change-over-time/27392/3 "2023-08-17T05:58:55Z")
> The problem is everytime I have to sacrifice the insect to get the DNA for sequencing.
I feel your pain. We had to use destructive sampling to get timeseries samples for [this project](https://academic.oup.com/femsec/article/93/10/fix121/4555378).
The argument we made to reviewer three was that
1. there's no better way to get this data 🤷
2. we carefully designed the lab experiment so that these samples could be considered biological replicates, even though they are physically different samples
We then treated the data as if it were from repeated-measures sampling. For this you could use [`longitudinal linear-mixed-effects`](https://docs.qiime2.org/2023.5/tutorials/longitudinal/#linear-mixed-effect-models) or
[`longitudinal volatility`](https://docs.qiime2.org/2023.5/tutorials/longitudinal/#volatility-analysis).
Also consider `first-distances` with `--p-baseline`, which does not necessarily assume repeated-measures sampling at all!
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### Author:  [@Joey51](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Joey51)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2023, 6:15pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/use-longitudinal-plugin-analysis-microbiota-change-over-time/27392/4 "2023-08-18T18:15:28Z")
Hello Colin,
Thank you for your reply.
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### Author:  [@Joey51](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Joey51)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2023, 6:25pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/use-longitudinal-plugin-analysis-microbiota-change-over-time/27392/5 "2023-08-18T18:25:23Z")
Thank you very much!
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### Author:  [@Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Nicholas_Bokulich)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2023, 7:39am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/use-longitudinal-plugin-analysis-microbiota-change-over-time/27392/7 "2023-11-11T07:39:24Z")
An off-topic reply has been merged into an existing topic: [Longitudinal analysis](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/longitudinal-analysis/28234/2)
Please keep replies on-topic in the future.
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### Author:  [@Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Nicholas_Bokulich)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2023, 7:39am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/use-longitudinal-plugin-analysis-microbiota-change-over-time/27392/8 "2023-11-11T07:39:06Z")