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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2006, p. 6773-6779, Vol. 72, No. 10
0099-2240/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.00474-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Introducing SONS, a Tool for Operational Taxonomic Unit-Based Comparisons of Microbial Community Memberships and Structures

Patrick D. Schloss{dagger} and Jo Handelsman*

Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706

Received 27 February 2006/ Accepted 31 July 2006

The recent advent of tools enabling statistical inferences to be drawn from comparisons of microbial communities has enabled the focus of microbial ecology to move from characterizing biodiversity to describing the distribution of that biodiversity. Although statistical tools have been developed to compare community structures across a phylogenetic tree, we lack tools to compare the memberships and structures of two communities at a particular operational taxonomic unit (OTU) definition. Furthermore, current tests of community structure do not indicate the similarity of the communities but only report the probability of a statistical hypothesis. Here we present a computer program, SONS, which implements nonparametric estimators for the fraction and richness of OTUs shared between two communities.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, WI 53706. Phone: (608) 263-8783. Fax: (608) 265-5289. E-mail: joh{at}plantpath.wisc.edu.

{dagger} Present address: Department of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts—Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2006, p. 6773-6779, Vol. 72, No. 10
0099-2240/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.00474-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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