Relative changes can be misread as absolute growth
RESEARCH PROBLEM
How can microbial composition and diversity be compared without treating relative abundance as absolute quantity?
Review taxonomic composition, within-sample diversity and between-sample distances together, while making the compositional and study-design limits explicit.
WHY THIS IS DIFFICULT
Different diversity indices answer different questions
Apparent ordination separation can reflect confounding
RESPONSIBLE APPROACH
Validate sample groups and result tables
Compare abundance and multiple diversity views
Evaluate statistical and compositional assumptions
RELEVANT FORNEUS RESEARCH
Working demonstration
Microbiome & Metagenomics Profiler
Interactive comparison of taxonomic abundance and ecological diversity across microbiome research cohorts.
View evidence and screenshots ↗Working demonstrationAMR Analyst
A research interface for reviewing antimicrobial-resistance gene matches in bacterial genome analysis results.
View evidence and screenshots ↗INTERPRETATION BOUNDARY
- Associations do not establish causality
- Raw-read preprocessing and appropriate statistical analysis remain separate
QUESTIONS THIS PAGE ANSWERS
- compare microbiome diversity
- interactive microbiome PCoA
- microbial cohort abundance visualisation