Results from performance testing using environmental datasets.

aProportion of the total reads in the dataset for which taxonomical assignment was achieved at the given taxonomical level. bNumber of unique taxa identified given separately for bacteria + archaea + eukaryotes. Where the highest total number of taxa was predicted from a test dataset, the number is indicated in bold. cClassification using Megablast alignments and the CREST LCAClassifier within a 2% LCA range of the highest bitscore as well as percent similarity filters. dNaïve Bayes classification using the RDP Classifier with a bootstrap confidence cutoff of 0.8. With the Greengenes training set, RDP Classifier was run via the QIIME script assign_taxonomy. eLCA clasification based on SINA Aligner, using default parameters at SILVA website.