Table 1.

Sequencing information and diversity estimates for the 45 samples of the North Atlantic Ocean obtained by pyrosequencing.

	Average per sample	Standard deviation	Range
Pyrotag length (bp)	62.51	± 3.47	51 – 165
Total number of pyrotags	18111	± 14869	2083 – 62100
Total unique pyrotags	2249	± 1529	479 – 7241
% of total unique pyrotags	14	± 3	6 – 23
Total OTUs at 3% difference	835	± 421	245 – 2063
Chao1 estimator of richness at 3% difference	1416	± 787	431 – 4032
ACE estimator of richness at 3% difference	1733	± 1220	552 – 7453