Hi all! I'm brand new to microbiome data analysis, so any help here is appreciated. My understanding is that the y-axis is a measure of the sum of the branch lengths for all members in whatever set/samples you're looking at, so the higher the value, the more diverse your sample is.
I'm just confused on how arbitrary/absolute the y-axis values are, though. For example, the pink sample definitely becomes more diverse over time, going from 9 to 24, roughly, but how big of a difference really is this? How do I interpret/make sense of this? Is there a maximum value to the y-axis? You can see how much I don't know :)
Well that's pretty much graphing software. They scale such that all the observations fit in. I used to write these back in the dark ages. Bet you never heard of Fortran IV LOL. Best wishes, David Booth. BTW higher is bigger than lower. So what does your variable mean? D . Booth
see Article Climate Change Impacts on the Tree of Life: Changes in Phylo...
Article Climate Change Impacts on the Tree of Life: Changes in Phylo...
Phylogenetic Diversity will be in whatever unit of measurement the branch lengths are in. So, if the branch lengths are scaled by molecular differences, then that is how differences on the y-axis can be interpreted.
The maximum value possible will be the full sum of branch lengths of the tree - that is, all tips in the tree are present in the sample.
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