Fig. 3
From: Performance determinants of unsupervised clustering methods for microbiome data
Illustration of the trimming process, summed average abundance of high-abundance OTUs plot, Rand index plot, and PCoA plots of the trimmed Schnorr dataset. A A schematic of a phylogenetic tree of OTUs, where the number in each node is the sum of the average abundance (left). After trimming the furthest branches, the average abundance of the new tree tip is greater than before (right). B The summed abundance of the high abundance OTUs grows with increased trimming. C The Rand index of Bray Curtis - PAM initially increases and then decreases with continued trimming of the phylogenetic tree towards the root. D The total Shannon diversity of the dataset decreases with the trimming process. E Bray-Curtis beta diversity PCoA plots show the separation of two natural clusters with no trimming, 19 levels of trimming, and 29 levels of trimming