Delimitation of adult and juvenile clusters
For the MOTUs that could not be identified to species level, we used the
best match to which the taxonomic assignment algorithm assigned that
MOTU, that is, the identifier of the specific sequence in the database
which was the most similar to the seed sequence of the MOTU. If the best
match of two unidentified MOTUs was the same, they were collapsed and
were treated as the same taxon. For comparative purposes, we also
analysed the results in two additional alternative ways: using a
”splitter” approach (every unidentified MOTU as a different species) and
using a “lumper” approach (all the unidentified MOTUs of the same
genus/family considered as the same species). However, using either of
those approaches only translated into minor differences in the results
with respect to the “best match” approach.