Bioinformatic strategies for abundance filtering

Bioinformatic Strategies for Abundance Filtering

Over the years, our lab has contributed a number of essential reviews about how DNA sequence data can be accurately converted into dietary information. The science is clear: inappropriate assumptions about how to 'clean up' sequence data using bioinformatics can do more harm than good by warping our diet profiles and generating misleading assumptions. Nevertheless, we have to make some such assumptions to generate datasets that are useful and informative. How should we think about striking a balance between these competing imperatives?

Led by Dr. Bethan Littleford-Colquhoun, one of the more important reviews we've produced on this topic was published in Molecular Ecology: The Precautionary Principle. This review, and a follow-up reply describing Evidence-based Strategies to Navigate Complexity, tackle the challenge of identifying appropriate abundance-filtering strategies in DNA metabarcoding pipelines. This post provides an essential summary of what we found... 

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