# SILVA taxonomy - strange genus names **URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/silva-taxonomy-strange-genus-names/13813 **Category:** General Discussion **Tags:** taxonomy **Created:** [February 28, 2020, 2:23pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/silva-taxonomy-strange-genus-names/13813 "2020-02-28T14:23:06Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 2
### Author: ![Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/nicholas_bokulich/32/19937_2.png) [@Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Nicholas_Bokulich) #### Post date: [February 28, 2020, 5:49pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/silva-taxonomy-strange-genus-names/13813/2 "2020-02-28T17:49:21Z")
Welcome to the forum, @GreenDragon! > [@GreenDragon](#): > > Is there any sense in SILVA taxonomy genus names like > “uncultured bacterium”, “gut metagenome” Unfortunately, these annotations are so vague that it is really unclear what they could represent and if they are theoretically same or separate entities. Given that you are receiving these classifications for distinct ASVs is a pretty good indication that they do represent distinct taxa, but you could look at those ASVs to decide for yourself whether it is worth collapsing. If I were in your shoes, I would keep separate. Though for your purposes maybe it makes sense to collapse for display purposes (e.g., to reduce the number of unique taxa displayed on a heatmap or barplot) — in which case go for it but note this: > [@GreenDragon](#): > > D\_3\_\_Clostridiales;D\_4\_\_Clostridiales vadinBB60 group;\_\_ Note: This is actually unclassified at the D\_5 level (meaning that the classifier could not determine a confident D\_5 classification, as there are many equal matches or no good matches)... the others are classified but to ambiguous taxa, so if you relabel you may want to relabel the unclassified and classified separately, e.g., as: D\_3\_\_Clostridiales;D\_4\_\_Clostridiales vadinBB60 group;D\_5\_\_unclassified and D\_3\_\_Clostridiales;D\_4\_\_Clostridiales vadinBB60 group;D\_5\_\_unknown Good luck! --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/silva-taxonomy-strange-genus-names/13813)._