BRCore: an R package implementing flexible selection of core taxa using contribution to Bray-Curtis dissimilarity and...

Area of Science:

• Microbial Ecology
• Bioinformatics
• Community Ecology

Background:

• Identifying core taxa is crucial for understanding microbial community structure and function.
• Core taxa are consistently found across diverse environments and are key to ecological interactions.
• Predicting microbial community assembly requires distinguishing between stochastic and deterministic processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present BRCore, a novel R package for identifying core microbial taxa.
• To enable the prediction of stochastic and deterministic taxa within microbial communities.
• To facilitate the analysis of ecological interactions based on core taxa identification.

Main Methods:

• Utilizes abundance-occupancy distributions to identify core taxa.
• Incorporates beta-diversity contributions across ecological niches.
• Employs statistical methods to differentiate between stochastic and deterministic taxa.

Main Results:

• BRCore effectively identifies core taxa based on specified ecological criteria.
• The package facilitates the prediction of microbial taxa's roles in community assembly.
• Demonstrates the utility of abundance-occupancy and beta-diversity metrics in core taxa identification.

Conclusions:

• BRCore provides a robust framework for core microbial taxa identification and ecological prediction.
• The package aids researchers in understanding microbial community assembly and ecological interactions.
• This tool enhances the analysis of microbial ecology by distinguishing core and non-core taxa.