Fig. 5

Comparison of vOTU recovery from SPRUCE viromes and total soil metagenomes. A Distribution of vOTUs recovered in each of three extraction groups (grouped by extraction method and collection date), based on read mapping to the PIGEON database (n = 5 viromes from 2018, 82 total soil metagenomes from 2015 to 2016, and 5 total soil metagenomes from 2018). B Accumulation curves of distinct vOTUs recovered as sampling increases for each extraction method; 100 permutations of sample order are depicted as open circles, line shows the average of the permutations for each method. C Number of vOTUs recovered per metagenome when reads were only allowed to map to vOTUs that assembled from metagenomes in the same category (self-mapped), considering four categories: 2018 bulk (n = 5), 2015 bulk (n = 38), 2016 bulk (n = 44), 2018 viromes (n = 5); bulk = total soil metagenomes. One outlier was excluded from the plot for ease of visualization; the y-axis value of the outlier in the 2018 viromes was 1328. Letters above boxes correspond to significant differences between groups (Student’s T test, significant when p < 0.05). D Similar to C, but reads were allowed to map to all vOTUs in the PIGEON database (PIGEON-mapped), including all vOTUs assembled from any of the SPRUCE metagenomes. Three outliers were removed from the plot for ease of visualization; the y-axis values of the two outliers from 2016 bulk were 1415 and 1818, and the value of the outlier from the 2018 viromes was 1558