Species Output Format Sometimes is Not a Species

Microbial community profiling MetaPhlAn
1

I’m using the version 4 set of tools. When I set the output to be species, not all results are. For example,

s__Bacteroidaceae_bacterium 2212467 2.02799

I thought I could split at the underscore to get genus on the left side and species on the right side. But Bacteroidaceae is actually a family. Is it a bug? I would expect to always see a genus name after the double underscore.

2

Hi @Dario
MetaPhlAn 4 taxonomy is based on the NCBI taxonomy of the reference genomes included in our genomic database. In this case, the species you are showing corresponds to the following ncbi taxonomy Taxonomy browser (Bacteroidaceae bacterium)