Discrepancy between estimated_number_of_reads_from_the_clade and the relative_abundance

Microbial community profiling MetaPhlAn
1

Hi there,
I’ve ran the MetaPhlAn4 with --ignore_eukaryotes --ignore_archaea -t rel_ab_w_read_stats options.

Then I got a subset of a table only with species-level taxa. The columns I have are clade_name, clade_taxid, relative_abundance, coverage, estimated_number_of_reads_from_the_clade.

However, I found out that some of the sample’s total sum of the relative_abundance exceeds 100. For example, 100.00006.

Also, when I calculate the relative abundance dividing each species’ estimated reads with the total sum of estimated reads, they differ from the corresponding relative_abundance that the MetaPhlan4 gave.

Why does this happen? I need both the absolute count table and the relative abundance table, then what should I use?

Thanks in advance for your answers.