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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Dec 1.
Published in final edited form as: Trends Microbiol. 2014 Sep 5;22(12):697–706. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2014.08.002

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Possible differential abundance patterns of organisms in host species. We propose terminology to describe different abundance patterns of members in the microbial community of host species, as originally reported in [70]. Cosmopolitan refers to organisms prevalent in all host species with no distinguishing patterns of abundance. Organisms that highly abundance in one host species and have low abundance or are absent in other hosts are designated as ‘host-preferred’. Organisms that are in only one host species but not detected in all individuals are designated ‘host-associated’. When describing occurrence patterns, the term host-specific is reserved for organisms that are present in all individuals of a host and absent in other host species. Many other patterns are possible; these terms are working definitions that can be used to assess candidate alternative indicators.