TABLE 1.
Mean values across all samples of alpha-diversity indices in the 16S rDNA and 16S rRNA read sets for the OTU and ZOTU taxonomic formation methodsa
| Alpha-diversity index | Read set | Mean (SD) value for diversity index by the following taxonomic formation method: |
Pb | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OTU | ZOTU | |||
| Richness | rDNA | 240 (68) | 240 (56) | 0.67 |
| rRNA | 240 (72) | 220 (47) | 0.20 | |
| Faith’s PD | rDNA | 7.9 (1.6) | 5.0 (0.82) | 0.00* |
| rRNA | 8.2 (2.1) | 5.3 (1.2) | 0.00* | |
| Shannon index | rDNA | 3.4 (0.7) | 4.2 (0.6) | 0.00* |
| rRNA | 3.7 (0.8) | 4.4 (0.64) | 0.02* | |
a
Alpha-diversity was calculated after all samples were normalized to a read depth of 31,560 or 17,707 for OTUs and ZOTUs, respectively, by randomly subsampling 10 times, and values were averaged.
b
P values are for Mann-Whitney tests for a significant difference between methods for the given index and read set. P values of <0.05 are indicated by an asterisk.