Fig 3.

Sequence similarities within and between erp sequence size classes are limited, except within the small-sized sequences. For each comparison, the horizontal line is the median, the box indicates the upper and lower quartiles, and whiskers indicate the maximum and minimum values. Average pairwise similarities among sequences within the large-sized sequences or within the medium-sized sequences are very low, with some pairs of sequences demonstrating as little as 17% identity. Small-sized sequences are a more homogeneous group, with an average of 69% sequence identity among pairs of sequences. Identity among pairs of sequences from different size groups was generally low, although some pairs of sequences between groups were more similar than pairs of sequences within groups. This result may indicate the presence of recombination events among sequences from different groups. Gap regions were not included in these analyses.