Is the barchat made by qiime2 using relative abundance and relative frequency the same?

[lys (liu)]

Dear all！

I did not see the description of relative abundance and relative frequency on the qiime2 official website.
The default analysis of qiime2 is to use frequency or relative frequency or relative abundance?
Should the qiime2 analysis process use relative abundance or relative frequency？
Will there be any difference in the results with relative frequency and relative abundance? Which result shall prevail?

Thanks for any suggestions!

[colinbrislawn (Colin J Brislawn)]

Hello @lys,

The qiime taxa barplot visualization displays the data as Relative Frequency (out of 100%), so the results on the graph should look the same if your data was relative or not.

@lys

The default analysis of qiime2 is to use frequency or relative frequency or relative abundance?

This depends on the plugin or visualization. You can transform your data into FeatureTable[RelativeFrequency] if you want to.

@lys

Will there be any difference in the results with relative frequency and relative abundance? Which result shall prevail?

I'm not sure I have a perfect answer... Keep in mind that Microbiome Datasets Are Compositional, so... this data is already relative in some sense!

Colin