ID-TaxER

ID-TaxER provides a soil-focused 16S rRNA gene reference database built from GB Countryside Survey (CS) sequences and integrates taxonomic and ecological metadata with Hierarchical Logistic Regression (HOF) models to relate Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) abundances to soil pH.

Key Features:

• Soil-specific 16S rRNA reference database: Built from GB Countryside Survey (CS) 16S rRNA gene sequences to capture soil bacterial diversity and distribution.
• Ecological metadata integration: Links taxonomic assignments to CS-derived ecological metadata, including soil pH.
• Hierarchical Logistic Regression Models (HOF): Employs HOF models to characterize and predict OTU responses across soil pH gradients.
• Predictive community and trait inference: Matches query datasets to CS-derived response models to predict community structure and ecological traits from environmental variables such as soil pH.
• DADA2 compatibility: Distributed as a DADA2-compatible database for incorporation into amplicon-analysis pipelines.

Scientific Applications:

• Ecological research: Enables linking of soil bacterial taxonomy to environmental response curves for studies of microbial ecology and biodiversity.
• Environmental monitoring: Supports assessment of how landscape-scale changes in soil pH influence microbial community composition.
• Predictive modeling: Facilitates prediction of bacterial abundance shifts under environmental scenarios using HOF-derived response models.

Methodology:

Reference database constructed from GB Countryside Survey 16S rRNA sequences; Hierarchical Logistic Regression (HOF) models fitted to derive OTU pH‑abundance response curves and to match query sequences to CS-derived responses.