Figure 1.

Representative rarefaction curves depicting the effect of 1%, 3%, and 5% dissimilarity on the number of identified and maximum predicted operative taxonomical units (OTUs) in one dog. (A) This plot shows that with the average number of collected sequencing tags per dog (mean ± SD: 3188 ± 1091 sequencing tags), we underestimated the number of OTUs at 1% dissimilarity. A reasonable coverage was obtained at 3% and 5% dissimilarity (curves approximate a parallel line to the x-axis). (B) To estimate the maximum number of OTUs at various dissimilarities, a Richards equation was fit to the rarefaction curves. The results indicate that approximately 38,000 sequences would need to be sampled to cover 100% of the expected OTUs in the canine jejunum.