Hi @rachel_haupt,
Welcome! I moved this over to general discussion because I think it’s probably a better fit for your question.
I like to think of different metrics like difference lens in a camera or microscope. Different lens will show me different things about my data. So, since jaccard distance is an unweighted taxonomic metric (doesnt consider abundance, doesnt consider phylogeny), it simply tells whether or not features are shared. Bray Curtis is similar, but it considers abundance. I tend to like to use Bray Curtis and weighted metrics when I’m worried about the most abundant things in a community. I like unweighted (Jaccard) when I want to give equal weight to rare and abundant organisms. But, my person preference is to look at multiple metrics so I can get a broader view of my data. Maybe I didn’t have a clear hypothesis apriori, but when I check in Bray Curtis distance, I find a difference I don’t see in another metric. That tells me abundant organisms are driving my difference and then I can test hypotheses from there.
I also want to link this back to an amazing post about all the metrics because I seriously use this one ALL the time and its great.
Best,
Justine