Understanding Percentile abundances in ANCOM

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1

Hi,

I’ve just run an l6 ANCOM on my data and I got the following result

Species A
Group1
0.00 49
25.0 128
50.0 265
75.0 534
100 1598

Group 2
0 1.00
25 1
50 1
75 63
100 3015

Group 3
0 303
25 1200
50 1615
75 2470
100 3460

I know that first numbers are the quartiles. Which one should I use to compare abundance between the 3 groups? The median?
And are the abundance values ratios? So is species A 1615 times more abundant group 3 than in group 2 (if we look at median values)? Or it more abundant in group 2 because when we consider 100% of samples, it has the highest number?

Thanks!

3

Yes these are quantiles of abundances. But I would be cautious about using those to make statements about increase/decrease of microbe abundances.

See the following papers on some of the caveats behind this

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10656-5
https://msystems.asm.org/content/2/1/e00162-16

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