Figure legends
Figure 1: (A) Differences in bacterial alpha diversity (Shannon diversity, Richness, Evenness Chao and Fishers Alpha) between H1 & H2 heights. (B) Differences in bacterial alpha diversity (Shannon diversity, Richness, Evenness, Chao and Fishers Alpha at all heights (H1, H2, H3 & H4). (C) Rarefraction curvewith error bars showing confidence intervals, for all four groups of samples based on OTUs detected using a similarity threshold of 97% (0.97) and phylum and genus levels.
Figure 2: Supervised PCA and Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) displaying the compositional distribution of the fecal microbiota at altitudes H1 and H2, comparing 16s rRNA and WGS results:(Ai) 16srRNA PCA and (Aii) CCA analysis, (Bi)WGS PCA and (Bii) CCA analysis. PERMDISP 2 Analysis indicating differences in global microbial community composition comparison at two heights H1 and H2: (Aiii) 16srRNA and (Biii) WGS. PERMDISP 2 Analysis indicating differences in global microbial community composition comparison at all heights H1, H2, H3, and H4 (C)PERMDISP 2, (D) CCA analysis .
Figure 3: (A) Differentially abundant & significant taxa in WGS data at phylum level (evaluated using T test at a p-value cut off of 0.05) at four heights H1, H2, H3 and H4.(B) Odds ratio at 95 % CI &at a p-value cut off of 0.05 at Heights H2 vs H1. (C) Differentially abundant & significant taxa in 16SrRNA data at Genus level using Wilcoxon rank test(D) Q-Q plots of p values for the association between the relative abundance and presence/absence of phyla.
Figure 4: (A) Differentially abundant & significant taxa in WGS data at Genus level (evaluated using T test at a p-value cut off of 0.05) at four heights H1, H2, H3 and H4. (B) Odds ratio at 95 % CI &at a p-value cut off of 0.05 at Heights H2 vs H1. (C) Differentially abundant & significant taxa in 16SrRNA data at Genus level using Wilcoxon rank test (D) Q-Q plots of p values for the association between the relative abundance and presence/absence of Genus.
Figure 5: FastTree uses, generalised time-reversible (GTR) models of nucleotide evolution in addition to the CAT Model (evolutionary rate heterogeneity) approximation, and finally for  estimating the reliability of each split in the tree using the Shimodaira-Hasegawa test, at 1000 resamples. 
Figure 6: Individual Significant Bacterial Profiles at all Time points.
Figure 7: (A) Functional characteristics of gut microbiomes of individuals at different altitudes (H2, H3 & H4) as compare with H1. (B) Alteration in metabolic pathways at H1 and H2 predicted by 16sRNA.