Genetic variability in microbial eukaryotes reshapes marine biodiversity assessment in the age of amplicon sequencing

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0326053 June 20, 2025 12 / 29 Fig 5. Heatmaps illustrating intraspecies and intraspecimen ASV patterns in Nassellaria. ASV presence and relative read abundance are shown for each group of morphospecies and genera: Pterocorys (a), Acanthodesmidae (b); Eucyrtidium hexagonatum (c); Pterocanium praetextum (d); and other Nassellaria (e). Morphological classifications of each specimen are shown on the y-axis of each heatmap with a random numeric identifier. The juvenile specimen could not be identified based on morphology; instead, it was classified as family Acanthodesmidae based on its dominant ASV match to a reference sequence (99.9% confidence). The x-axis of each heatmap denotes the ASVs (represented by tick marks) present in each specimen of a morphospecies or group of morphotaxa. Relative read abundances of ASVs per specimen are indicated by the shade of blue (light = low abundance, dark = high abundance); ASVs not present in a particular specimen are indicated as white background. Representative micrographs of morphotaxa are shown on the right and below each heatmap. All data underlying this figure can be found in S1 Data. Photos of every specimen can be found in S1 Fig. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0326053.g005