Improved detection of changes in species richness in high-diversity microbial communities

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hierarchical model that enhances the detection of changes in species richness within high-diversity microbial communities, addressing limitations of current methods in identifying rare taxa.

Contribution

A novel hierarchical model that improves accuracy in detecting biodiversity changes and heterogeneity in microbial communities with high diversity.

Findings

Reduces Type I and II errors in species richness detection

Effectively detects changes in rare taxa

Outperforms existing methods in accuracy

Abstract

High throughput sequencing (HTS) continues to expand our understanding of microbial communities, despite insufficient sequencing depths to detect all rare taxa. These low abundance taxa are not accounted for in existing methods for detecting changes in species richness. We address this with a new hierarchical model that permits rigorous testing for both heterogeneity and biodiversity changes, and simultaneously improves Type I & II error rates compared to existing methods.