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Title: WHAT CAN ECOLOGICAL DIVERSITY INDICES APPLIED TO T-RFLP DATA REALLY TELL US?

Author
item BLACKWOOD, CHRISTOPHER - KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
item HUDLESTON, DEBORAH - KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
item ZAK, DONALD - UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
item Buyer, Jeffrey

Submitted to: American Society for Microbiology Annual Meeting
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/1/2007
Publication Date: 5/23/2007
Citation: Blackwood, C., Hudleston, D., Zak, D.R., Buyer, J.S. 2007. What can ecological diversity indices applied to t-rflp data really tell us [abstract]? American Society for Microbiology Annual Meeting.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: It is frequently the case that microbial ecologists hope to infer a change in diversity (richness and evenness) from terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) profiles. However, the use of diversity indices originating from traditional ecology has not been validated for T-RFLP data. Artifacts associated with T-RFLP which could affect diversity indices include different taxa generating the same T-RF, and lack of detection of rare taxa. We performed simulations using the lognormal abundance distribution and information for bacteria stored in the ARB small-subunit ribosomal database to investigate the effects of these artifacts on calculation of diversity indices. The correlation between values for the underlying community and the T-RFLP profiles was evaluated for seven indices. Richness, Shannon diversity, Simpson diversity, and other indices calculated from T-RFLP were not useful for estimating any indices calculated from the underlying community. We therefore suggest that consistent differences in diversity indices calculated from T-RFLP profiles should be reinterpreted as a reflection of differences in community composition, rather than a difference in community diversity. The only consistently useful relationship between a T-RFLP index and an actual community index was between T-RFLP Smith and Wilson evenness and Shannon diversity calculated on the underlying community.