Fig. 2

Taxon rank-abundance distributions for (a) bacteria and (b) fungi. Subplots magnify the initial portion of each curve. Rarefied OTU tables were log(x + 1)-transformed and mean abundances and standard errors within sample types (vacuums, swabs, and cuts) were computed for each OTU. OTUs were then ranked by mean abundance. Center lines represent mean abundances and shaded regions are standard errors based on seven samples per sample type. Dashed vertical lines represent the minimum number of OTUs that account for 50% of rarefied reads. For example, the red dashed vertical line in (a) shows that 93 bacterial OTUs accounted for 50% of all reads. For fungi, swab and vacuum 50% lines lie on top of each other. Note: Y-axes in both plots are log scale and were truncated at 1000. While not visible, abundance of bacterial OTUs ran as high as 3715 for bacteria and over 100 for fungi (geometric mean over seven samples)