Fig. 5

The relative abundances of species detected by tools compared to their known abundances for (a) simulated datasets and (b) a biological dataset, sorted by median log-modulus difference (difference' = sign(difference)*log(1 + |difference|)). Most differences between observed and expected abundances fell between 0 and 10, with a few exceptions (see inset for scale). c The deviation between observed and expected abundance by expected percent relative abundance for two high variance tools on the simulated data. While most tools, like Diamond-MEGAN, did not show a pattern in errors, GOTTCHA overestimated low-abundance species and underestimated high-abundance species in the log-normally distributed data. d The L1 distances between observed and expected abundances show the consistency of different tools across simulated datasets