Ecological coherence of diversity patterns derived from classical fingerprinting and <scp>N</scp> ext <scp>G</scp> eneration <scp>S</scp> equencing techniques

Summary Changes in richness and bacterial community structure obtained via 454 M assively P arallel T ag S equencing ( MPTS ) and A utomated R ibosomal I ntergenic A nalysis ( ARISA ) were systematically compared to determine whether and how the ecological knowledge obtained from both molecular techniques could be combined. We evaluated community changes over time and depth in marine coastal sands at different levels of taxonomic resolutions, sequence corrections and sequence abundances. Although richness over depth layers or sampling dates greatly varied [∼ 30% and 70–80% new operational taxonomic units ( OTU ) between two samples with ARISA and MPTS