# do feature tables need to be rarefied prior to calculating diversity metrics?
**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/do-feature-tables-need-to-be-rarefied-prior-to-calculating-diversity-metrics/23714
**Category:** User Support
**Created:** [July 26, 2022, 2:56pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/do-feature-tables-need-to-be-rarefied-prior-to-calculating-diversity-metrics/23714 "2022-07-26T14:56:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dong316](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/dong316)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2022, 2:56pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/do-feature-tables-need-to-be-rarefied-prior-to-calculating-diversity-metrics/23714/1 "2022-07-26T14:56:27Z")
Thanks! @Stephanieorch
A quick question. Does the "table.qza" here need to be rarefied?
Thanks in advance!
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### Author:  [@colinbrislawn](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/colinbrislawn)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2022, 2:03pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/do-feature-tables-need-to-be-rarefied-prior-to-calculating-diversity-metrics/23714/2 "2022-07-27T14:03:26Z")
You may need to account for differences in sequencing depth somehow. Subsampling to an equal depth (rarifying) is one way to do that.
> [@Is it necessary to rarefy FeatureData\[Sequence\] if I rarefy FeatureTable\[Freqeuncy\]?](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/is-it-necessary-to-rarefy-featuredata-sequence-if-i-rarefy-featuretable-freqeuncy/21063):
>
> Hi, I am trying to do UPGMA clustering for some data from different countries. I collected these data from different databases. Finally, I will use the following code; qiime diversity beta-rarefaction But, samples from some countries contain a very higher number of reads ( as much as 2.7 million), while samples of some countries have a very low number of reads (like only 9k). Eventually after denoising the data with Deblur, some samples have a very higher number of feature and other contain…
> **[Waste Not, Want Not: Why Rarefying Microbiome Data Is Inadmissible](https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003531)**
>
> Author Summary The term microbiome refers to the ecosystem of microbes that live in a defined environment. The decreasing cost and increasing speed of DNA sequencing technology has recently provided scientists with affordable and timely access to the...
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2022, 8:03pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/do-feature-tables-need-to-be-rarefied-prior-to-calculating-diversity-metrics/23714/3 "2022-08-27T20:03:31Z")
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