TABLE 3.

Comparison of statistical parameters and results for the three primer sets

Parameter	P-SSU-316F and GIC758R	GIC1080F and GIC1578R	GIC1184F and GIC1578R
Total no. of sequences before quality assurance steps	19,886	10,143	8,611
Total no. of sequences after quality assurance steps	12,326	6,070	8,265
No. of unique sequences used for BLAST	769	697	424
Trimmed sequence length (bases)	450	450	375
No. of subsampled unique sequences used for statistical analysis	424	424	424
Species-level distance within generaa	0.036	0.039	0.042
Recommended % cutoff for species-level OTUs	4	4	4
Observed species-level OTUs	48	25	20
CHAO	112	58	42
ACE	226	92	145
Shannon-Weaver	2.36	1.02	1.37
Good's coverage	0.94	0. 96	0.97
Inverse Simpson	4.69	1.71	2.59
Genus-level distance across generab	0.087	0.079	0.096
Recommended % cutoff for genus-level OTUs	9	8	10
Observed genus-level OTUs	15	14	12

^aUsing nearly full-length 18S rRNA gene sequences from valid species, the species-level cutoff was calculated to be 0.031.

^bUsing nearly full-length 18S rRNA gene sequences, the genus-level cutoff was calculated to be 0.071.