Creating a representative taxa bar plot for multiple samples?

[macrobiome (T)]

Hi, I was wondering if there is a way to create a representative taxa bar plot that represents a set of samples. I am able to generate bar plot where each sample has its own bar, but I was wondering if there is a way to create a consolidated bar that represents multiple samples?

Thanks!

[colinbrislawn (Colin J Brislawn)]

Hi

@Nicholas_Bokulich

It sounds like using the action feature-table group would achieve what you describe. If you have a metadata category that describes which individual a sample came from, you can use group to collapse the feature table by group.

Note that the sample IDs will no longer be the original sample IDs, and will instead be the values from that metadata category (e.g., the individual ID). So you will need to create a new metadata file with these values as sample IDs for downstream analyses.

I often merge samples and merge ASV when making bar plots

For statistics and PCoA plots, I keep all my samples separate to preserve statistical power.

[macrobiome (T)]

Thank you @colinbrislawn! My goal is to just show one bar plot as a representative of the samples in a group. If I display all of them separately, they look too noisy. I'll try this and report back. Thanks again!